14/ hat  are  you  doing?     Are  you  insane?' 

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SUuatrati'ti  ffiibrarjj  lEBitiun 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN? 
COLLECTED  ARTICLES 
DEATH   OF  I  VAN  ILICH     . 

DRAMATIC  WORKS 
THE  KREUTZER  SONATA 

By 
COUNT  LEV   N.  TOLSTOY 


Translated  from  the  Original  Russian 
and  edited  by 

PROFESSOR  LEO  WIENER 


BOSTON 

COLONIAL  PRESS  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  ig04 
By  Dana  Estes  &  Company 


Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall 


Colonial    Press  :     Electrotyped   and    Printed    by 
C.  H.  Simonds  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


mi 


Oc|  II />0^'S15 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

What  Shall  We  Do  Then? 3 

On  the  Moscow  Census          ......  343 

Introduction  to  the  Collected  Articles,  What  Is 

the  Truth  in  Art?          ......  357 

To  the  Dear  Youth 363 

What  a  Christian  May  Do,  and  What  Not     .         .  371 

Letter  to  N.  N.  (To  Engelhard)          ....  377 

Introduction  to  T.  M.  Bondarev's  Teaching    .         .  397 

Letter  to  a  Frenchman 415 

The   Holiday   of    Enlightenment   of    the    12th    of 

January .  429 


POPULAR  LEGENDS 

How  THE  Devil  Redeemed  the  Crust  of  Bread 
The  Repentant  Sinner  ...... 

The  Kernel  of  the  Size  of  a  Hen's  Egg  . 
How  Much  Land  a  Man  Needs    .... 

The  Godson 


Three  Sons       ....... 

Labourer  Emelyan  and  the  Empty  Drum 


439 
444 

448 
452 

470 

491 

499 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTEATIONS 


PAGE 

Visiting  their  Son 71 

Amusements  of  the  Rich 196 


"  What  are  yoit  doing,  are  you  insane?  "  (p.   154) 

Frontispiece 

"  I  will  work  myself  " 123 

"  Do  you  know  why  he  is  so  frightened?  "        .        .     249 


Vol.  9. 


WHAT   SHALL  WE  DO  THEN? 

1886 


WHAT   SHALL  WE  DO  THEN? 


And  the  people  asked  him,  saying,  What  shall  we  do 
then? 

He  auswereth  and  saith  unto  them.  He  that  hath  two 
coats,  let  him  impart  to  him  that  hath  none  ;  and  he  that 
hath  meat,  let  him  do  likewise  (Luke  iii.  10,  11). 

Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  upon  earth,  where 
moth  and  rust  doth  corrupt,  and  where  thieves  break 
through  and  steal  : 

But"  lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven,  where 
neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  corrupt,  and  where  thieves  do 
not  break  through  nor  steal. 

For  where  your  treasure  is,  there  will  your  heart  be  also. 

The  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye  :  if  therefore  thine  eye 
be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light. 

But  if  thine  eye  be  evil,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of 
darkness.  If  therefore  the  light  that  is  in  thee  be  darkness, 
how  great  is  that  darkness  ! 

No  man  can  serve  two  masters  :  for  either  he  will  hate 
the  one,  and  love  the  other  ;  or  else  he  will  hold  to  the  one, 
and  despise  the  other.    Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon. 

Therefore  I  say  unto  you.  Take  no  thought  for  your  life, 
what  ye  shall  eat,  or  what  ye  shall  drink  ;  nor  yet  for  your 
body,  what  ye  shall  put  on.  Is  not  the  life  more  than 
meat,  and  the  body  than  raiment  ? 

Therefore  take  no  thought,  saying.  What  shall  we  eat  ? 
or.  What  shall  we  drink  ?  or.  Wherewithal  shall  we  be 
clothed  ? 

(For  after  all  these  things  do  the  Gentiles  seek  :)  for  your 
heavenly  father  knoweth  that  ye  have  need  of  all  these 
things. 

But  seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  his  righteous- 
ness, and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you  (Matt, 
vi.  19-25,  31-33). 

It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle, 
than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God 
(Matt.  xix.  24  ;  Luke  xviii.  25  ;  Mark  x.  25). 

3 


WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN? 


I  HAD  passed  all  my  life  in  the  country.  When,  in  the 
year  1881,  I  moved  to  Moscow,  I  was  struck  by  the  pov- 
erty of  the  city :  I  knew  what  the  poverty  of  the  village 
was,  but  that  of  the  city  was  new  and  incomprehensible 
to  me.  In  Moscow  it  is  impossible  to  walk  through  a 
street  without  meeting  mendicants,  of  a  particular  type, 
such  as  do  not  resemble  those  one  sees  in  the  country. 
These  beggars  are  not  mendicants  with  a  wallet  and  with 
Christ's  name,  such  as  village  beggars  are  imagined  to  be, 
but  beggars  without  a  wallet  and  without  Christ's  name. 
The  beggars  of  Moscow  do  not  carry  a  wallet  and  beg  no 
alms.  As  a  rule,  when  they  meet  you  or  allow  you 
to  pass  them,  they  try  to  catch  your  eyes,  and  they  beg 
or  not,  according  to  your  glance. 

I  know  one  such  beggar  from  the  gentry.  The  old 
man  walks  slowly,  putting  his  weight  on  each  foot. 
When  he  meets  you,  he  puts  his  weight  on  one  foot  and 
acts  as  though  he  were  bowing  to  you.  If  you  stop,  he 
takes  hold  of  his  cockaded  cap,  bows  to  you,  and  begs  you 
for  an  alms ;  if  you  do  not  stop,  he  pretends  just  to  have 
such  a  gait,  and  passes  on,  bowing  with  a  leaning  on  his 
other  foot.  He  is  a  real,  trained  Moscow  beggar.  At 
first  I  did  not  know  why  the  Moscow  beggars  did  not  beg 
outright,  but  later  I  came  to  understand  it,  though  I  did 
not  understand  their  condition. 

One  day,  as  I  was  walking  through  Afanasev  Lane,  I 
saw  a  policeman  putting  a  tattered  peasant,  who  was 
pudgy  with  the  dropsy,  into  a  cab.  I  asked  him  why  he 
was  doing  this. 

The  policeman  answered  me :  "  For  begging  alms." 

"  Is  that  forbidden  ?  " 

"  I  guess  it  is,"  replied  the  policeman. 

The  dropsical  man  was  taken  away  in  the  cab.     I  took 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  5 

another  cab  and  followed  them.  I  wanted  to  find  out 
whether  it  was  true  that  it  was  prohibited  to  beg  alms, 
and  how  this  prohibition  was  carried  out.  I  could  not 
make  out  how  one  man  could  be  kept  from  asking  a  thing 
of  another,  and,  besides,  I  could  not  make  myself  believe 
that  there  could  be  a  law  against  begging,  since  Moscow 
was  full  of  beggars.  I  had  myself  driven  to  the  police 
station  whither  they  took  the  beggar.  In  the  station  a 
man  with  a  sword  and  a  pistol  was  sitting  at  a  table. 
I  asked  him  : 

"  Why  was  this  peasant  arrested  ?  " 

The  man  with  the  sword  and  the  pistol  looked  sternly 
at  me,  and  said : 
.   "  That  is  not  your  business." 

However,  as  he  felt  the  necessity  of  explaining  some- 
thing to  me,  he  added  : 

"  The  authorities  order  such  people  to  be  arrested,  and 
so  it  is  right." 

I  went  away.  The  policeman  who  had  brought  the 
beggar  was  sitting  in  the  vestibule  on  a  window-sill,  and 
looking  gloomily  into  a  memorandum-book.  I  asked 
him  : 

"  Is  it  true  that  beggars  are  not  permitted  to  beg  in 
Christ's  name  ? " 

The  pohceman  was  startled.  He  looked  at  me,  then 
half  frowned,  half  fell  asleep  again,  and,  seating  himself 
back  on  the  window-sill,  said : 

"  The  authorities  order  it,  and  so  it  is  right,"  and  started 
to  busy  himself  once  more  with  his  book. 

I  went  out  on  the  porch  to  the  cabman. 

"Well,  how  is  it?  Did  they  take  him?"  asked  the 
cabman. 

The  cabman  was  evidently  interested  in  the  same 
thing. 

«  They  did,"  I  replied. 

The  driver  shook  his  head. 


<>  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

"  How  is  this  ?  Do  they  Dot  allow  people  here  in  Mos- 
cow to  beg  iu  the  name  of  Christ  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Who  can  make  them  out  ? "  said  the  driver. 

"  But  how  is  this  ? "  I  said.  "  A  beggar  is  Christ's,  and 
they  take  him  to  the  station." 

"  They  have  stopped  it  all  in  these  days,  —  they  don't 
let  them." 

After  that  I  saw  pohcemen  on  several  occasions,  taking 
beggars  to  the  station  and  from  there  to  Yusupov  Work- 
house. One  day  I  met  a  crowd  of  such  beggars,  about 
thirty  of  them,  in  Myasnitskaya  Street.  They  were 
preceded  and  followed  by  pohcemen.  I  asked  one  of 
them  why  they  were  taken  away. 

"  For  begging  alms." 

So  it  turns  out  that  according  to  the  law  alms  may  not 
be  asked  by  any  of  those  mendicants  of  whom  one  meets 
several  at  a  time  in  every  street,  and  rows  of  whom  stand 
in  froDt  of  the  churches  during  divine  service  and  espe- 
cially during  funerals. 

But  why  are  some  caught  and  locked  up  somewhere, 
while  others  are  let  alone  ?  That  I  was  unable  to  make 
out.  Or  are  there  among  them  lawful  and  unlawful  beg- 
gars ?  Or  are  there  so  many  of  them  that  it  is  impossible 
to  apprehend  all  ?  Or  do  they  take  some  away,  while 
others  take  their  place  ? 

In  Moscow  there  are  many  beggars  of  every  kind  :  there 
are  some  who  make  a  living  in  this  manner ;  others  are 
real  beggars,  who  in  one  way  or  another  are  stranded  in 
Moscow,  and  really  suffer  want. 

Among  these  beggars  there  are  frequently  simple  peas- 
ants, men  and  women,  in  peasant  attire.  I  have  often 
come  across  such.  Some  of  these  fell  sick  and  came  out 
of  hospitals,  and  are  unable  to  provide  food  for  themselves, 
or  to  get  out  of  Moscow.  Others  again  have,  in  addition, 
been  on  sprees  (such,  no  doubt,  was  that  dropsical  man) ; 
others  were  not  convalescents,  but  men  who  had  lost  their 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  7 

property  in  fire,  or  old  men,  or  women  with  children ; 
others  again  were  quite  well  and  able  to  work. 

These  well  peasants,  who  were  begging  alms,  interested 
me  more  particularly.  These  healthy,  able-bodied  beg- 
gars interested  me  also  for  the  reason  that  ever  since 
my  arrival  in  Moscow  I  had  made  it  my  habit  to  take  my 
exercise  by  going  out  to  the  Sparrow  Hills  and  working 
there  with  two  peasants  who  were  sawing  wood.  These 
two  peasants  were  just  such  beggars  as  those  whom  I  met 
in  the  streets.  One  of  them  was  Peter,  a  Kaluga  peas- 
ant, the  other  Semen,  from  the  Government  of  A^ladimir. 
All  they  possessed  was  what  they  wore  on  their  backs, 
and  their  hands.  And  with  these  hands  they,  by  work- 
ing very  hard,  earned  from  forty  to  forty-five  kopeks  per 
day,  out  of  which  amount  they  saved  up  money :  the 
Kaluga  peasant,  —  to  buy  himself  a  fur  coat,  and  the 
Vladimir  peasant,  —  to  get  enough  money  with  wliich 
to  return  home.  For  this  reason  I  was  particularly 
interested  in  such  people,  when  I  met  them  in  the  streets. 

Why  do  those  work,  while  these  beg  ? 

"Whenever  I  met  such  a  peasant,  I  generally  asked  him 
what  had  brought  him  into  such  a  plight.  One  day  I  met 
a  peasant  with  his  beard  streaked  gray  and  with  a  sound 
body.  He  was  begging.  I  asked  him  who  he  was  and 
whence  he  came.  He  said  that  he  had  come  from  Kaluga 
to  try  to  earn  something.  At  first  he  and  his  friend  had 
found  some  work  to  do,  —  cutting  up  old  lumber  for  fire- 
wood. They  had  finished  the  job,  and  had  been  looking 
for  more  work,  but  could  find  none.  In  the  meantime 
his  friend  had  strayed  from  him,  and  here  he  was  strug- 
gling the  second  week,  and  had  spent  everything,  and  did 
not  have  a  kopek  to  buy  a  saw  or  an  axe  with.  I  gave 
him  money  with  which  to  buy  a  saw,  and  told  him  where 
to  come  to  work.  I  had  already  left  word  with  Peter 
and  Sem^n  to  receive  him  and  find  a  partner  for  him. 

"  Be  sure  and  come !     There  is  lots  of  work  there." 


8  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

"  I  will,  of  course  I  will  come.  What  good,"  he  said, 
"  is  there  in  begging  ?     I  can  do  a  day's  work." 

The  peasant  swore  that  he  would  coiue,  and  I  thought 
that  he  was  not  deceiving  me,  but  fully  intended  to 
come. 

On  the  following  day  I  went  to  my  friends,  the  peas- 
ants, to  ask  them  whether  he  had  come.  No,  he  had  not. 
And  thus  a  number  of  men  deceived  me.  I  was  also 
deceived  by  such  as  wanted  money  just  for  a  ticket  with 
which  to  get  home,  but  whom  a  week  later  I  met  in  the 
street  again.  Many  of  these  I  came  to  know,  just  as  they 
knew  me ;  at  times  they  forgot  me  and  approached  me 
again  with  the  same  deception,  and  at  other  times  they 
went  away  the  moment  they  saw  me.  Thus  I  saw  that 
among  the  number  of  these  people  there  were  also  many 
cheats  ;  but  even  these  cheats  were  very  pitiful :  they  were 
all  half-naked,  poverty-stricken,  emaciated,  sickly  people ; 
they  were  of  that  class  who  really  freeze  to  death  and 
hang  themselves,  as  we  know  from  the  newspapers. 


II. 

Whenever  I  spoke  of  this  urban  wretchedness  to  city 
people,  I  was  always  told :  "  Oh  that  is  nothing !  You 
have  not  seen  everything  :  you  must  go  to  Khitrov  Market 
and  to  the  doss-houses  thereabout.  There  you  will  see 
the  genuine  crack  company."  One  jester  told  me  that  it 
was  no  longer  a  company,  but  a  crack  regiment,  for  there 
were  so  many  of  them.  The  jester  was  right,  but  he 
would  have  been  still  more  in  the  right  if  he  had  said  that 
there  was,  not  a  company,  and  not  a  regiment,  but  a  whole 
army  of  them  in  Moscow :  I  think  there  are  fifty  thousand 
of  them.  Old  citizens,  in  speaking  to  me  of  the  urban 
wretchedness,  always  spoke  with  a  certain  degree  of  pleas- 
ure, as  though  they  were  proud  to  know  it.  I  remember, 
when  I  was  in  London,  the  natives  seemed  to  speak 
boastfully  of  the  London  poverty,  as  much  as  to  say : 
"  That's  the  way  we  do  things." 

I  wanted  to  see  the  wretchedness  of  which  I  was  told. 
I  started  several  times  to  go  to  Khitrov  Market,  but  I  felt 
every  time  uncomfortable  and  ashamed. 

"  Why  should  I  go  to  see  the  sufferings  of  men  whom  I 
am  unable  to  help  ?  "  one  voice  said. 

"  No,  if  you  live  here  and  see  all  the  joys  of  city  life, 
go  and  see  this  also,"  another  voice  said. 

And  so,  in  the  month  of  December  of  the  third  year,  on 

a  cold  and  stormy  day,  I  started  for  this  centre  of  city 

wretchedness,  for  Khitrov  Market.     It  was  a  week-day, 

about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.    As  I  was  going  down 

the  Solyanka,  I  began  to  notice  more  and  more  people  in 

strange   apparel,  evidently  not    their    own,  and  in   still 

9 


10  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

stranger  footgear,  —  people  with  an  unusually  sickly  com- 
plexion and,  above  all,  with  a  special  expression  of  indif- 
ference to  the  surroundings,  which  was  common  to  them 
all.  Though  wearing  the  strangest  kinds  of  garments,  of 
most  unseemly  patterns,  these  people  wa\ked  along  freely, 
evidently  devoid  of  all  thought  as  to  how  they  might 
strike  other  people.  All  these  were  walking  in  the  same 
direction. 

I  did  not  ask  for  the  road,  though  I  did  not  know  it, 
but  followed  them,  and  came  out  on  Khitrov  Market.  In 
the  market-place  just  such  women,  young  and  old,  in  tat- 
tered capes,  cloaks,  jackets,  boots,  and  overshoes,  acting 
with  just  as  little  constraint,  in  spite  of  the  monstrosity 
of  their  attire,  were  sitting  and  hawking  something,  or 
walking  about  and  cursing.  There  were  few  people  in 
the  market-place.  Apparently  it  was  past  market-time, 
and  the  majority  of  people  were  going  up-hill,  past  the 
market  and  across  it,  all  of  them  in  the  same  direction. 
I  followed  them.  The  farther  I  went,  the  greater  was 
the  throng  of  people  walking  in  the  same  direction. 
After  I  had  passed  the  market  I  walked  up  the  street, 
falling  in  with  two  women,  one  of  them  old,  the  other 
young.  Both  wore  torn  gray  clothes.  They  were  walking 
and  talking  about  something. 

After  every  necessary  word  they  uttered  one  or  two 
unnecessary,  extremely  improper  words.  They  were  not 
drunk,  but  were  agitated  by  something;  the  men  who 
were  walking  toward  them,  and  preceding  or  following 
them,  did  not  pay  the  slightest  attention  to  their  strange 
expressions.  In  these  places  evidently  all  people  spoke 
in  the  same  way. 

On  the  left  were  private  lodging-houses,  and  a  few 
stopped  here,  while  others  walked  on.  After  ascending 
the  hill,  we  came  to  a  large  corner  house.  The  majority 
of  those  who  were  walking  with  me  stopped  at  this  house. 
On  the  whole  sidewalk  in  front  of  this  house  just  such 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  11 

people  walked  about  or  sat  down  on  the  walk  or  in  the 
snow  of  the  street.  On  the  right  hand  of  the  entrance 
door  were  women,  and  on  the  left  —  men.  I  walked  past 
the  women,  and  then  past  the  men  (there  were  several 
hundreds  of  them),  and  stopped  where  their  file  came  to  an 
end.  The  house,  in  front  of  which  these  people  were 
stopping,  was  the  free  Lyapinski  lodging-house.  The 
crowd  of  people  were  waiting  to  be  admitted  for  a  night's 
lodging.  The  doors  are  opened  at  five  o'clock,  when  the 
people  are  admitted.  It  was  to  this  place  that  the  major- 
ity of  people  past  whom  I  had  walked  were  trying  to 
get. 

I  stopped  where  the  file  of  men  came  to  an  end.  The 
people  nearest  to  me  began  to  look  at  me  and  attracted 
me  with  their  glances.  The  remnants  of  the  garments 
that  covered  their  bodies  were  quite  varied ;  but  the 
expression  of  all  the  glances  that  these  people  directed  at 
me  was  absolutely  the  same.  In  all  their  glances  one 
could  read  the  question,  "  Why  did  you,  a  man  from 
another  world,  stop  here  by  the  side  of  us  ?  Who  are 
you  ?  Are  you  a  self-satisfied  rich  man,  who  is  trying 
to  take  delight  out  of  our  misery,  to  distract  yourself  in 
your  ennui,  and  to  torture  us  ?  Or  are  you  —  what  does 
not  happen  and  cannot  be  —  a  man  who  pities  us  ?  " 

This  question  was  on  all  the  faces.  A  man  would 
glance  at  me,  meet  my  glance,  and  turn  away  again.  I 
felt  like  starting  up  a  conversation  with  some  one,  but  for 
a  long  time  I  could  not  make  up  my  mind  to  do  so.  But 
while  we  were  silent,  our  glances  were  bringing  us  closer 
together.  No  matter  how  much  life  separated  us,  we  felt 
after  the  exchange  of  two  or  three  glances  that  we  were 
all  men,  and  we  ceased  fearing  one  another.  Nearest  to 
me  stood  a  peasant  with  a  swollen  face  and  a  red  beard, 
in  a  torn  caftan  and  overshoes  worn  down  to  the  skin.  It 
was  eight  degrees  Reaumur  below  zero.  Our  eyes  met 
for  the  third  or  fourth  time,  and  I  felt  myself  so  close  to 


12  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

him  that,  far  from  feeling  ashamed  to  speak  with  him,  I 
felt  that  I  should  be  ashamed  if  I  did  not  strike  up  a 
conversation  with  him. 

I  asked  him  where  he  came  from.  He  answered  cheer- 
fully, and  began  to  talk  ;  others  came  up  to  us.  He  was 
from  Smolensk,  and  had  come  to  find  work  with  which  to 
earn  money  for  grain  and  for  the  taxes. 

"  You  cannot  find  any  work,"  he  said,  "  for  the  soldiers 
nowadays  get  all  the  work  away  from  us.  And  so  I  am 
wandering  about.  I  swear  by  God  I  have  not  had  any- 
thing to  eat  for  two  days." 

This  he  said  timidly,  with  an  attempt  at  a  smile.  A 
sbiten  ^  peddler,  an  old  soldier,  was  standing  near  by.  I 
called  him  up.  He  filled  up  a  glass  of  sbiten.  The  peas- 
ant took  the  hot  glass  into  his  hands  and,  before  drinking 
it,  warmed  his  hands  over  it,  trying  not  to  waste  any  of 
the  heat.  While  he  was  warming  his  hands  he  told  me 
his  adventure.  The  adventures,  or  the  stories  of  the 
adventures,  are  nearly  always  the  same :  he  had  a  small 
job,  but  it  stopped,  and  his  purse  with  his  money  and  his 
ticket  were  stolen  in  a  lodging-house.  Now  he  was  un- 
able to  get  away  from  Moscow.  He  told  me  that  in  the 
daytime  he  warmed  liimself  in  taverns  and  fed  on  free 
lunches  (bits  of  bread  in  the  taverns) ;  at  times  they  let 
him  have  a  piece,  and  at  times  they  drove  him  out ;  he 
passed  his  nights  in  the  free  Lyapinski  House.  He  was 
waiting  for  the  policy  raid  which  would  take  him  to  jail, 
as  he  had  no  passport,  and  would  send  him  by  ^tappe 
back  to  his  place  of  residence.  "  They  say  the  raid  will 
happen  on  Thursday."  (The  jail  and  the  ^tappe  presented 
themselves  to  him  as  a  promised  land.) 

While  he  was  telling  me  this,  two  or  three  men  from 
among  the  crowd  confirmed  his  words,  saying  that  they 
were  in  precisely  the  same  condition.     A  lean,  pale,  long- 

J  A  drink  composed  of  water,  honey,  and  laurel  leaves,  or  sage, 
used  by  the  masses  in  the  place  of  tea. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  13 

nosed  young  man,  \\'ith  nothing  but  a  shirt  over  the  upper 
part  of  his  body,  with  holes  above  his  shoulders,  and  in  a 
visorless  cap,  pushed  his  way  toward  me  sidewise  through 
the  crowd.  He  was  trembling  all  the  time  with  a  violent 
chill,  but  tried  to  smile  contemptuously  at  the  remarks  of 
the  peasants,  hoping  thus  to  fall  in  with  my  tone,  and 
kept  looking  at  me.  I  offered  him  also  a  glass  of  sbiten. 
He,  too,  took  the  glass  and  warmed  himself  over  it,  and 
just  as  he  began  to  talk  he  was  pushed  aside  by  a  tall, 
swarthy,  hook-nosed  man,  in  a  chintz  shirt  and  a  vest,  and 
without  a  hat. 

The  hook-nosed  fellow,  too,  asked  me  for  some  sbiten. 
Then  came  a  long-legged  old  man  with  a  wedge-shaped 
beard,  wearing  an  overcoat  with  a  rope  girdle  and  bast 
shoes,  —  he  was  drunk ;  then  a  little  fellow  with  a 
swollen  face  and  tearful  eyes,  who  wore  a  brown  nankeen 
frock  coat,  and  whose  bare  knees  could  be  seen  through 
the  holes  of  his  summer  pantaloons,  striking  one  against 
the  other  from  the  cold.  He  could  not  hold  the  glass 
because  of  his  chill,  and  spilled  its  contents  over  himself. 
They  began  to  scold  him.  He  only  smiled  pitifully  and 
trembled. 

Then  there  came  a  crooked  cripple  with  rags  on  his 
body  and  on  his  bare  feet,  then  something  that  resembled 
an  officer,  and  something  that  resembled  a  clergyman, 
then  something  strange  and  noseless,  —  all  that  cold 
and  hungry,  imploring  and  humble  mass  crowded  about 
me  and  made  for  the  sbiten.  They  all  drank  the  sbiten. 
One  of  them  asked  for  some  money,  and  I  gave  it  to  him. 
A  second,  a  third,  asked  for  money,  and  I  was  besieged  by 
the  crowd.  The  janitor  of  a  neighbouring  house  shouted 
to  the  crowd  to  clear  the  sidewalk  in  front  of  his  house, 
and  the  people  submissively  executed  his  command. 
Some  men  in  the  crowd  took  the  matter  in  hand,  and 
offered  me  their  protection  :  they  wanted  to  take  me  out 
of   the   crush,  but  the   crowd,   which  before   had   been 


14  WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

stretched  out  along  the  sidewalk,  was  now  in  commotion, 
pressing  close  to  me.  They  all  looked  at  me,  and  begged 
me  for  something ;  and  one  face  was  more  pitiful,  more 
emaciated,  and  more  humbled  than  another.  I  gave  them 
everything  I  had.  I  did  not  have  much  money  with  me, 
—  something  Uke  twenty  roubles,  —  and  I  entered  the 
lodging-house  with  the  crowd. 

The  lodging-house  is  enormous.  It  consists  of  four 
divisions.  In  the  upper  stories  are  the  apartments  for 
men,  and  in  the  lower  those  for  women.  At  first  I 
entered  the  female  division :  a  large  room  is  here  taken 
up  by  bunks,  reseml)ling  those  of  third-class  railway-cars. 
The  bunks  are  arranged  in  two  tiers.  Strange,  ragged 
women,  both  old  and  young,  with  nothing  but  the  clothes 
they  had  on,  kept  coming  in  and  occupying  their  places, 
some  below,  and  others  above.  Some  of  them,  the  older 
ones,  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  and  prayed  for  him 
who  had  founded  this  asylum,  while  others  laughed  and 
cursed. 

I  went  up-stairs.  There  the  men  took  up  their  bunks ; 
among  them  I  saw  one  of  those  to  whom  I  had  given 
money.  When  I  saw  him,  I  suddenly  felt  dreadfully 
ashamed,  and  I  hurried  to  get  out.  I  left  this  house  with 
the  sensation  of  having  committed  a  crime,  and  went 
home.  At  home  I  walked  over  the  carpet  of  the  stair- 
case into  an  antechamber,  the  floor  of  which  was  covered 
with  cloth,  and,  having  taken  off  my  fur  coat,  I  sat  down 
at>a  five-course  dinner,  which  was  served  by  two  lackeys 
in  dress  coats,  white  ties,  and  white  gloves. 

Thirty  years  ago  I  saw  in  Paris  a  man  decapitated  by  a 
guillotine  in  the  presence  of  a  thousand  spectators.  I 
knew  that  this  man  was  a  terrible  criminal ;  I  knew  all 
those  reflections  which  men  had  been  writing  for  so  many 
centuries,  in  order  to  justify  such  acts  ;  I  knew  that  it 
was  being  done  intentionally,  conscientiously ;  but  at  the 
moment  when  the  head  and  the  body  separated  and  fell 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  15 

into  the  box,  I  groaned,  and  I  understood,  not  with  my 
mind,  not  with  my  heart,  but  with  my  whole  being,  that 
all  the  reflections  which  I  had  heard  about  capital  punish- 
ment were  a  horrible  blunder ;  that,  no  matter  how  many 
people  might  come  together  in  order  to  commit  murder,  — 
the  worst  crime  on  earth,  —  and  no  matter  how  they 
might  call  themselves,  murder  was  murder,  and  that  this 
sin  had  been  committed  in  my  sight.  By  my  presence 
and  non-interference  I  approved  of  this  sin,  and  took  part 
in  it. 

Even  so  now,  at  the  sight  of  this  starvation,  cold,  and 
humiliation  of  thousands  of  men,  I  understood,  not  with 
my  reason,  nor  with  my  heart,  but  with  my  whole  being, 
that  the  existence  of  tens  of  thousands  of  such  men  in 
Moscow,  while  I  with  other  thousands  gorge  myself  on 
fillet  and  sturgeon,  and  cover  the  floors  and  the  horses 
with  stuffs  and  carpets,  —  no  matter  what  all  the  wise 
men  of  the  world  may  tell  me  about  its  being  necessary, 
—  is  a  crime,  which  is  not  committed  once,  but  is  being 
committed  all  the  time,  and  that  I,  with  my  luxury,  not 
only  incite  to  it,  but  also  take  part  in  it.  For  me  the 
difference  of  these  two  impressions  consisted  in  this,  that 
there  all  I  could  have  done  was  to  have  called  out  to  the 
murderers  who  were  standing  near  the  guillotine  and 
attending  to  the  murder,  that  they  were  doing  wrong, 
and  to  have  tried  in  every  way  to  interfere  with  them ; 
but  in  doing  so,  I  might  have  known  that  that  act  of 
mine  would  not  have  prevented  the  murder.  But  here  I 
not  only  was  able  to  give  the  sbiten  and  all  the  miserable 
little  sum  wMch  I  had  with  me,  but  might  have  given 
away  my  overcoat  and  everything  which  I  had  at  home. 
I  did  not  do  so,  and  so  I  felt,  and  feel  even  now,  and 
shall  never  stop  feeling,  that  I  am  a  participant  in  a 
crime  which  is  taking  place  all  the  time,  so  long  as  I 
have  superfluous  food,  and  another  man  has  none,  and 
I  have  two  garments,  when  another  has  not  even  one. 


III. 

That  very  evening,  upon  my  return  from  Lyapinski 
House,  I  told  my  impressions  to  a  friend  of  miue. 
My  friend  —  a  denizen  of  Moscow  —  began  to  tell  me, 
not  without  pleasure,  that  this  is  a  very  natural  urban 
phenomenon ;  that  it  was  only  my  provincialism  which 
made  me  see  something  peculiar  in  it ;  that  it  had  been 
so  all  the  time  and  would  always  be  so,  and  that  it  was 
an  inevitable  couditiou  of  civilization.  In  Loudon  it 
was  worse  still,  —  consequently  there  was  nothing  bad 
in  tliis,  and  there  was  no  reason  for  being  dissatisfied 
with  it. 

I  began  to  retort  to  my  friend,  but  did  this  with  so 
much  excitement  and  vim  that  my  wife  came  running  in 
from  the  other  room,  to  ask  what  had  happened.  It  was 
discovered  that,  without  knowing  it  myself,  I  had  been 
shouting  with  tears  in  my  voice  and  waving  my  arms  in 
my  friend's  face.  I  yelled,  "  It  is  impossible,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  live  in  such  a  way,  impossible  ! "  I  was  put  to 
shame  for  my  excessive  excitement,  and  I  was  told  that 
I  could  not  speak  calmly  about  anything  and  that  I 
became  unpleasantly  irritated,  and,  above  all  else,  it  was 
proved  to  me  that  the  existence  of  such  unfortunates 
could  by  no  means  be  a  cause  for  poisoning  the  life  of 
one's  family. 

I  felt  that  that  was  quite  true,  and  I  grew  silent ;  but 
in  the  depth  of  my  soul  I  felt  that  I  was  right,  and  I 
could  not  calm  myself. 

The  city  life,  which  had  been  strange  and  alien  to  me 
before,  now  disgusted  me  so  much  that  all  those  joys  of  a 

16 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  17 

luxurious  life,  which  heretofore  had  appeared  as  joys  to 
me,  now  became  a  torment  for  me.  No  matter  how 
much  I  tried  to  find  in  my  soul  some  kind  of  a  justifica- 
tion of  our  life,  I  could  not  without  irritation  look  either 
at  my  own  drawing-room  or  at  that  of  another  person, 
nor  at  a  cleanly,  elegantly  set  table,  nor  at  a  carriage,  nor 
at  a  fat  coachman  and  his  horses,  nor  at  shops,  theatres, 
or  assembhes.  I  could  not  help  but  see  side  by  side  with 
them  the  cold,  hungry,  and  humiliated  inmates  of  Lya- 
pinski  House.  I  could  not  rid  myself  of  the  idea  that 
these  two  things  were  connected  and  that  one  grew  out 
of  the  other.  I  remember  how  the  feeling  of  guilt  re- 
mained in  me  the  same  it  had  appeared  in  the  first 
moment ;  but  very  soon  another  sentiment  mingled  with 
this  and  overshadowed  it. 

When  I  spoke  of  my  impression  of  Lyapinski  House  to 
my  near  friends  and  acquaintances,  all  gave  me  the  same 
answer  that  was  given  me  by  my  first  friend,  to  whom  I 
had  been  yelling  so,  but  they,  in  addition  to  that,  ex- 
pressed their  approval  of  my  goodness  and  sensitiveness, 
and  gave  me  to  understand  that  this  spectacle  acted  upon 
me  thus  only  because  I,  Lev  Nikolaevich,  was  good  and 
kind.  I  believed  them  readily.  Before  I  had  a  chance 
to  look  around,  the  feeling  of  resentment  and  repentance, 
which  I  had  experienced  at  first,  gave  way  in  me  to  a 
feeling  of  satisfaction  with  my  virtue,  and  a  desire  to 
express  it  to  other  people. 

"No  doubt,"  I  said  to  myself,  "it  is  not  I  who  am 
guilty  here  with  my  luxurious  life,  but  the  necessary 
conditions  of  life.  The  change  of  my  life  could  certainly 
not  change  the  evil  which  I  saw.  By  changing  my  hfe 
I  should  only  make  myself  and  my  family  unhappy, 
while  those  misfortunes  will  remain  what  they  are. 

"  Consequently,  my  task  does  not  consist  in  changing 
my  life,  as  I  had  thought  at  first,  but  in  contributing,  as 
much  as  it  lies  in  my  power,  to  the  improvement  of  the 


18  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

condition  of  those  unfortunates  who  have  called  forth  my 
compassion.  The  whole  matter  is  that  I  am  a  very  good 
and  kindly  man  and  wish  to  do  my  neighbours  some 
good." 

And  so  I  began  to  consider  a  plan  of  philanthropic 
activity  in  which  I  should  have  a  chance  to  give  expres- 
sion to  my  virtue.  I  must,  however,  say  that,  while 
reflecting  on  this  philanthropic  activity,  I,  in  the  depth 
of  my  soul,  felt  that  it  was  not  the  right  thing,  but,  as 
frequently  happens,  the  activity  of  my  mind  and  of  my 
imagination  drowned  in  me  this  voice  of  my  conscience. 

Just  then  they  were  taking  the  census.  This  seemed 
to  me  to  be  a  chance  for  the  exercise  of  that  philanthropy 
in  which  I  wanted  to  express  my  virtue.  I  knew  of 
many  charitable  institutions  and  societies  that  existed  in 
Moscow,  but  their  activity  seemed  to  me  to  be  falsely 
directed  and  insignificant  in  comparison  with  what  I 
wanted  to  do.  And  so  I  hit  on  the  following :  I  would 
call  forth  in  the  rich  a  sympathy  for  the  city's  wretched- 
ness ;  would  collect  money  and  bring  together  men  who 
would  be  willing. to  cooperate  in  this  matter;  would  visit 
with  the  census-takers  all  the  purlieus  of  poverty  and, 
besides  the  work  of  taking  the  census,  would  enter  into 
communion  with  the  unfortunates ;  would  find  out  the 
details  of  their  needs  and  aid  them  with  money,  with 
work,  with  sending  them  out  of  Moscow  and  locating  the 
children  in  schools  and  the  old  people  in  homes  and  poor- 
houses.  More  than  this :  I  thought  that  out  of  those 
people  who  would  busy  themselves  with  this  there  would 
be  formed  a  permanent  organization,  which,  dividing  up 
among  themselves  the  wards  of  Moscow,  would  see  to 
it  that  the  poverty  and  misery  should  not  become  infec- 
tious ;  would  always  destroy  the  infection,  at  its  incep- 
tion ;  would  attend  not  so  much  to  the  duty  of  curing  as 
to  the  hygiene  of  the  urban  poverty,  I  imagined  that, 
not  to  speak  of  the  mendicants,  there  would  not  be  any 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  19 

merely  needy  people  in  the  city  ;  and  that  it  would  be  I 
who  would  do  all  this;  and  that  we,  the  rich  people, 
would  after  that  sit  quietly  in  our  drawing-rooms,  and 
eat  five-course  dinners,  and  travel  in  carriages  to  theatres 
and  assemblies,  no  longer  troubled  by  such  sights  as  I 
had  seen  near  Lyapinski  House. 

Having  formed  this  plan,  I  wrote  an  article  about  it, 
and,  before  sending  it  to  be  printed,  called  on  acquaint- 
ances whose  cooperation  I  hoped  to  get.  To  all  whom  I 
saw  during  that  day  (I  turned  mainly  to  the  rich)  I  re- 
peated the  same  words,  almost  what  I  had  written  in  the 
article :  I  proposed  to  make  use  of  the  census  for  the  pur- 
pose of  discovering  all  about  the  poverty  in  Moscow,  and 
helping  it  with  works  and  with  money,  and  seeing  to  it 
that  there  should  be  no  poor  in  Moscow,  so  that  we,  the 
rich  people,  might  with  a  calm  conscience  enjoy  the  bene- 
fits of  life  to  which  we  were  accustomed.  AU  listened  to 
me  attentively  and  seriously,  but  precisely  the  same  thing 
took  place  with  every  one  of  them.  The  moment  my 
hearers  understood  what  it  was  all  about,  they  seemed  to 
feel  uncomfortable  and  a  little  conscience-stricken.  They 
felt  embarrassed,  mainly  for  my  sake,  because  I  was  talk- 
ing such  foohsh  things,  and  yet  such  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  say  outright  that  they  were  foolish.  It  was  as 
though  some  external  cause  compelled  the  hearers  to  nod 
consent  to  this  my  foolishness. 

"  Oh,  yes !  Of  course.  It  would  be  so  nice,"  they 
said  to  me.  "  It  goes  without  saying  that  we  must  sym- 
pathize with  that.  I  thought  so  myself,  but  our  people 
are  in  general  so  indifferent  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
count  on  much  success  —  However,  I  on  my  part  am, 
of  course,  prepared  to  cooperate." 

All  told  me  very  nearly  the  same.  All  consented,  but 
they  did  so,  as  I  thought,  not  in  consequence  of  my  con- 
viction and  not  in  consequence  of  their  own  desire,  but  in 
consequence  of  some  external  cause  which  made  it  impos- 


20  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

sible  for  them  not  to  agree.  This  I  noticed  from  the  fact 
that  not  one  of  those  who  offered  me  their  cooperation  by 
contributing  money  himself  defined  the  sum  which  he 
intended  to  give,  so  that  I  was  compelled  to  determine  it 
by  asking,  "  So  I  may  count  on  you  to  the  extent  of  300, 
or  200,  or  100,  or  125  roubles  ? "  and  not  one  of  them 
gave  the  money.  I  mention  this,  because  when  people 
contribute  money  for  something  they  sympathize  witli, 
they  are  generally  in  a  hurry  to  give  the  money.  For 
a  box  at  Sarah  Beruhardt's  performance  people  pay  out 
the  money  at  once,  in  order  to  secure  the  matter  ;  but  here, 
not  one  of  all  those  who  agreed  to  contribute,  and  who 
expressed  their  sympathy,  offered  to  pay  the  money  at 
once ;  they  only  acquiesced  in  the  sum  which  I  de- 
termined for  them. 

In  the  last  house  in  which  I  happened  to  be  on  that 
evening,  I  accidentally  met  a  large  company.  Tbe  hostess 
of  this  house  had  for  some  years  been  busying  herself  with 
philanthropy.  At  the  entrance  stood  several  carriages, 
and  in  the  antechamber  sat  a  number  of  lackeys  in  costly 
liveries.  In  the  large  drawing-room  married  and  unmar- 
ried ladies,  wearing  expensive  garments,  were  seated  at 
two  tables  with  lamps,  dressing  small  dolls,  and  near 
them  were  also  a  few  young  men.  The  dolls  which 
were  being  fixed  up  by  these  ladies  were  to  be  raffled  off 
for  the  benefit  of  the  poor. 

The  sight  of  this  drawing-room  and  of  the  men  who 
were  gathered  in  it  struck  me  very  disagreeably.  Not  to 
mention  the  fact  that  the  fortunes  of  the  people  gathered 
there  were  equal  to  several  millions ;  that  the  mere  inter- 
est of  the  capital  which  was  expended  here  on  garments, 
lace,  bronzes,  brooches,  carriages,  horses,  liveries,  lackeys, 
would  be  a  hundred  times  greater  than  what  these  ladies 
were  manufacturing  here,  —  not  to  mention  all  that,  the 
expenses  incurred  by  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  coming 
out  here,  —  their  gloves,  their  linen,  their  travelling,  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  21 

candles,  tea,  sugar,  and  cake  furnished  by  the  hostess 
amounted  to  a  hundred  times  the  sum  they  would  reahze 
from  their  work.  I  saw  all  this,  and  so  I  ought  to  have 
known  that  there  I  should  not  find  any  sympathy  for  the 
business  which  brought  me  there  ;  but  I  had  come  to 
make  my  proposition,  and,  no  matter  how  hard  this  was 
for  me,  I  told  them  what  I  wanted  (I  repeated  almost 
word  for  word  what  I  had  written  in  my  article). 

One  of  the  ladies  present  offered  me  money,  saying  that 
she  did  not  feel  strong  enough  on  account  of  her  nerves  to 
visit  the  poor,  but  that  she  would  give  money  ;  how  much 
she  would  give,  and  when  she  would  furnish  it,  she  did 
not  say.  Another  lady  and  a  young  man  offered  their 
services  in  making  the  round  of  the  poor  ;  but  I  did  not 
avail  myself  of  their  offer.  The  chief  person  to  whom  I 
addressed  myself  told  me  that  it  would  not  be  possible  to 
do  much,  because  the  means  were  insignificant.  The  means 
were  not  sufficient  because  all  the  rich  people  of  Moscow 
were  already  booked  for  other  charities,  and  everything 
that  possibly  could  be  obtained  from  them  had  been 
extorted  from  them ;  that  all  these  philanthropists  had 
already  received  their  ranks,  medals,  and  other  honours ; 
that  in  order  to  secure  a  financial  success  it  would  be 
necessary  to  obtain  the  grant  of  new  honours  from  the 
authorities,  and  that  this  was  the  one  effective  means,  but 
that  it  was  hard  to  obtain  it. 

When  I  returned  home  that  night,  I  lay  down  to  sleep, 
not  only  with  the  presentiment  that  nothing  would  come 
of  my  idea,  but  also  with  shame  and  with  the  conscious- 
ness that  I  had  done  something  very  contemptible  and 
disgraceful  on  that  whole  day.  But  I  did  not  throw  up 
the  matter.  In  the  first  place,  the  matter  had  been  set 
a-going,  and  a  false  shame  kept  me  from  giving  it  up  ;  in 
the  second  place,  not  only  the  success  of  this  matter,  but 
my  every  occupation  with  it,  made  it  possible  for  me  to 
continue  life  in  those  conditions  in  which  I  was  living, 


22  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO   THEN? 

while  its  failure  subjected  me  to  the  necessity  of  renounc- 
ing my  life  and  of  seeking  new  paths  of  hfe.  Of  this  I 
was  unconsciously  afraid.  I  did  not  believe  my  inner 
voice,  and  continued  what  I  had  begun. 

I  sent  my  article  ^  to  the  printer,  and  read  it  in  proof 
to  the  City  Council.  As  I  read  it,  I  blushed  to  tears  and 
faltered  in  speech,  for  1  felt  so  uncomfortable.  Appar- 
ently all  my  hearers  felt  as  uncomfortable  as  I.  In  reply 
to  my  question,  which  I  put  at  the  end  of  my  reading, 
whether  the  managers  of  the  census  accepted  my  propo- 
sition, which  was  that  they  should  stay  in  their  places  in 
order  that  they  might  be  mediators  between  society  and 
the  needy,  there  ensued  an  awkward  silence.  Then  two 
orators  delivered  speeches.  These  seemed  to  mend  the 
awkwardness  of  my  proposition  :  they  expressed  sympa- 
thy for  me,  but  pointed  out  the  inapplicability  of  my 
idea,  which  was  approved  by  all  of  them.  They  felt  a 
rehef. 

But  when  I  later  none  the  less  tried  to  gain  my  point, 
and  asked  the  managers  privately  whether  they  consented 
at  the  census  to  investigate  the  needs  of  the  poor,  and  to 
remain  in  their  posts  for  the  purpose  of  serving  as  media- 
tors between  the  poor  and  the  rich,  they  again  felt  ill  at 
ease.  They  seemed  to  be  saying  to  me  with  their  glances  : 
"  Here  we  have,  out  of  respect  for  you,  whitewashed  your 
stupid  break,  and  you  annoy  us  once  more  with  it."  Such 
was  the  expression  of  their  faces,  but  in  words  they  told 
me  that  they  agreed  with  me ;  two  of  them,  each  one 
separately,  as  though  having  plotted  together,  told  me  in 
the  same  words :  "  We  consider  ourselves  morally  ohliged 
to  do  so." 

The  same  impression  was  produced  by  my  communica- 
tion on  the  student  census-takers,  when  I  told  them  that 
in  taking  the  census  we  should  not  only  pursue  the  aims 
of  the  census  itself,  but  also  those  of  philanthropy.  I 
1 "  On  the  Census  in  Moscow,"  given  in  this  present  volume. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  23 

noticed  that,  while  I  was  speaking  to  them  of  it,  they 
looked  with  embarrassment  iuto  my  eyes,  just  as  one  is 
embarrassed  to  look  iuto  the  eyes  of  a  good  man  who 
is  talking  some  nonsense.  The  same  effect  was  produced 
on  the  editor  of  the  newspaper,  by  my  article,  when  I 
handed  it  to  him,  and  on  my  son,  on  my  wife,  and  on 
people  of  every  description.  All  for  some  reason  felt 
ill  at  ease,  but  all  of  them  considered  it  necessary  to 
approve  of  the  idea  itself,  and  immediately  after  such  an 
approval  began  to  express  their  doubts  as  to  the  success, 
and  for  some  reason  (all  of  them  without  exception)  to 
condemn  the  evident  indifference  and  coldness  of  our 
society  and  of  all  men,  except  of  themselves. 

In  the  depth  of  my  heart  I  continued  to  feel  that  I  was 
not  doing  the  right  thing,  and  that  nothing  would  come 
of  it ;  but  the  article  was  printed,  and  I  began  to  take 
part  in  the  census :  I  had  set  the  matter  a-going,  and  it 
drew  me  along. 


IV. 

At  my  request  they  assigned  to  me  a  district  of  the 
Khamovnicheski  Ward,  near  Smolensk  Market,  along  Pro- 
tochny  Lane,  between  Beregovoy  Passage  and  Nikolski 
Lane.  In  this  district  are  the  houses  which  are  collect- 
ively called  Ezlianov  House,  or  Rzhanov  Fort.  These 
houses  at  one  time  belonged  to  Merchant  Rzhanov,  but 
now  belong  to  the  Zimins.  I  had  long  ago  heard  of  this 
place  as  the  purlieus  of  the  most  terrible  luisery  and 
debauch,  and  so  had  asked  the  managers  of  the  census  to 
assign  me  to  this  district.     My  wish  was  fulfilled. 

After  receiving  the  instructions  from  the  City  Council, 
and  a  few  days  before  the  taking  of  the  census,  I  started 
on  a  round  of  my  district.  From  the  plan  which  was 
given  to  me  I  immediately  found  Rzhanov  Fort. 

I  entered  by  Nikolski  Lane.  Nikolski  Lane  ends  on 
the  left  with  a  gloomy  house,  which  has  no  gate  fac- 
ing this  side ;  I  guessed  from  the  aspect  of  the  house 
that  this  was  Rzhanov  Fort. 

As  I  descended  Nikolski  Street,  I  came  abreast  of  some 
boys  from  ten  to  fourteen  years  of  age,  dressed  in  jackets 
and  paltry  overcoats,  who  were  sliding  down-hill  or 
skating  on  one  skate  along  the  frozen  incline  of  the  side- 
walk in  front  of  this  house.  The  boys  were  all  in  rags, 
and,  like  all  city  boys,  bold  and  daring.  I  stopped  to 
take  a  look  at  them.  A  tattered  old  woman,  vdth  sallow, 
flabby  cheeks,  came  around  the  corner.  She  was  walking 
toward  the  city,  in  the  direction  of  Smolensk  Market,  and 
wheezing  terribly,  hke  an  asthmatic  horse,  at  every  step 

she  was  taking.     When  she  came  abreast  with  me,  she 

24 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  25 

stopped  to  draw  a  snarliug  breath.  In  any  other  place 
this  woman  would  have  asked  me  for  some  money,  but 
here  she  only  struck  up  a  conversation  with  me. 

"  You  see,"  she  said,  pointing  to  the  skating  boys,  "  they 
are  wasting  time  !  They  will  be  just  such  Ezhanovians 
as  their  fathers." 

One  of  the  boys  in  an  overcoat  and  vizorless  cap  heard 
her  words  and  stopped. 

"  Don't  scold  !  "  he  shouted  to  the  old  woman.  "  You 
are  yourself  a  Ezhanov  viper  !  " 

I  asked  the  boy  :  "  Do  you  live  here  ?  " 

"  Yes,  and  she  does,  too.  She  has  stolen  a  boot-leg  !  " 
shouted  the  boy,  and,  raising  his  foot,  he  skated  past 
me. 

The  old  woman  discharged  a  lot  of  curses,  which  were 
interrupted  by  her  cough.  Just  then  a  ragged  old  man 
with  snow-white  hair  came  down  the  middle  of  the  street, 
swaying  his  arms  (in  one  of  them  he  carried  a  bundle 
with  a  white  loaf  and  some  cracknels).  The  old  man 
looked  as  though  he  had  just  braced  himself  with  a  dram. 
Evidently  he  had  heard  the  old  woman's  curses,  and  he 
took  her  part. 

"  Just  let  me  catch  you,  little  devils ! "  he  shouted  to 
the  boys,  pretending  to  make  for  them.  After  passing  me 
he  stepped  on  the  sidewalk.  On  the  Arbat  this  old  man 
startles  people  by  his  decrepitude,  old  age,  and  wretched- 
ness ;  here  he  was  a  merry  labourer  returning  from  his 
daily  labour. 

I  followed  the  old  man.  He  turned  a  corner  to  the 
left,  into  Protochny  Lane,  and,  after  passing  the  whole 
house  and  the  gate,  disappeared  in  the  door  of  a  restau- 
rant. 

Two  gates  and  several  doors  front  on  Protochny  Lane  : 
they  are  those  of  a  restaurant,  a  tavern,  and  a  few  gro- 
ceries and  other  shops.  This,  indeed,  is  Ezhanov  Fort. 
Everything  is  here  gray,  diriy,  and  stinking,  —  the  build- 


26  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

ings,  the  shops,  the  yards,  the  people.  The  majority  of  the 
people  whom  I  met  here  were  tattered  and  half-dressed. 
Some  were  passing  by,  while  others  ran  from  door  to  door. 
Two  of  them  were  haggling  about  a  piece  of  some  rag.  I 
walked  all  around  the  building  from  the  side  of  Protochny 
Lane  and  Beregovoy  Passage,  and,  upon  returning,  stopped 
at  the  gate  of  one  of  the  houses.  I  wanted  to  go  in  and 
see  what  they  were  doing  there,  inside,  but  I  felt  ill  at 
ease  at  what  I  should  say  if  they  asked  me  what  I 
wanted.     Still,  after  some  hesitation,  I  entered. 

The  moment  I  entered  the  courtyard  I  was  struck  by  a 
disgusting  stench.  The  yard  was  terribly  dirty.  I 
turned  around  a  corner,  and  that  very  moment  heard 
to  the  left  of  me,  in  an  upper  wooden  gallery,  the  tramp 
of  men  running,  at  first  along  the  deals  of  the  gallery, 
and  then  over  the  steps  of  the  staircase.  First  there 
came  running  out  a  lean  woman  with  sleeves  rolled  up,  in 
a  faded  pink  dress  and  with  shoes  on  her  bare  feet. 
After  her  came  a  shaggy-haired  man  in  a  red  shirt  and 
pantaloons  which  were  as  wide  as  a  petticoat,  and  in 
galoshes. 

At  the  foot  of  the  stairs  the  man  caught  the  woman, 

"  You  will  not  get  away  from  me,"  he  said,  laughing. 

"  You  cross-eyed  devil,"  began  the  woman,  apparently 
flattered  by  this  persecution ;  but,  upon  seeing  me,  she 
shouted  :  "  Whom  do  you  want  ? " 

As  I  did  not  want  anybody,  I  felt  embarrassed  and 
went  away.  There  was  nothing  remarkable  about  it,  but 
after  what  I  had  seen  outside  the  yard,  —  the  cursing 
woman,  the  merry  old  man,  and  the  skating  boys,  —  this 
incident  suddenly  showed  me  my  undertaking  from  an 
entirely  new  side.  I  had  undertaken  to  benefit  these 
people  with  the  aid  of  the  Moscow  rich.  Now  I  under- 
stood for  the  first  time  that  all  these  unfortunates,  whom 
I  wanted  to  benefit,  had  not  only  a  time  when,  suffering 
from  hunger  and  cold,  they  waited  to  be  admitted  to  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  27 

house,  but  also  a  time  which  they  used  to  some  purpose ; 
that  they  had  twenty-four  hours  each  day  and  a  whole  life, 
which  I  had  never  thought  before.  I  now  understood  for 
the  first  time  that  all  these  people  had  not  only  the 
desire  to  protect  themselves  against  the  cold  and  to  get 
something  to  eat,  but  also  must  hve  somehow  those 
twenty-four  hours  of  each  day,  which  they  had  to  live 
like  any  other  being.  1  understood  that  these  men 
had  also  to  be  angry,  and  feel  weary,  and  brace  them- 
selves, and  have  their  brown  studies,  and  make  merry. 
However  strange  this  may  sound,  I  now  clearly  under- 
stood for  the  first  time  that  what  I  had  undertaken  could 
not  consist  merely  in  feeding  and  clothing  a  thousand 
people,  —  like  feeding  and  putting  under  a  roof  a  thou- 
sand sheep,  —  but  that  it  ought  to  consist  in  doing  people 
good.  When  I  understood  that  each  of  these  thousand 
people  was  just  such  a  man  as  I  was,  with  just  such 
a  past,  just  such  passions,  temptations,  and  delusions,  just 
such  thoughts,  just  such  questions,  my  undertaking  sud- 
denly appeared  so  difficult  to  me  that  I  felt  my  impo- 
tence.    But  the  thing  was  begun,  and  I  continued  it. 


On  the  first  appointed  day  the  student  census-takers 
started  in  the  morning,  but  I,  the  benefactor,  did  not  get 
to  them  before  noon.  I  could  not  have  come  earher, 
because  I  arose  at  ten,  then  drank  coffee  and  smoked, 
waiting  for  my  digestion  to  take  place.  I  arrived  at  noon 
at  the  gate  of  Ezhanov  House. 

A  policeman  showed  me  a  restaurant  on  Beregovoy 
Passage,  where  the  census-takers  asked  those  to  come  who 
wanted  to  see  them.  I  entered  the  restaurant.  It  was 
a  dark,  stinking,  dirty  place.  In  front  was  the  counter, 
on  the  left,  a  small  room  with  tables  that  were  covered 
with  dirty  napkins ;  on  the  right,  a  large  room  with 
columns,  and  similar  tables  at  the  windows,  along  the 
walls.  At  some  of  the  tables,  drinking  tea,  sat  tattered 
and  decently  dressed  men,  such  as  workmen  and  small 
traders,  and  a  few  women.  The  restaurant  was  very  dirty, 
but  apparently  it  did  a  good  business.  The  facial  expres- 
.  sion  of  the  clerk  behind  the  counter  was  businesslike,  and 
the  waiters  were  quick  and  attentive :  I  had  barely 
entered,  when  a  waiter  got  ready  to  take  off"  my  overcoat 
and  receive  my  order.  Obviously  they  were  here  in  the 
habit  of  doing  prompt  and  exact  work. 

I  asked  about  the  census-takers. 

"  Vanya ! "  shouted  a  small  man,  dressed  in  German 
fashion,  who  was  putting  something  into  a  cupboard 
behind  the  counter ;  he  was  the  proprietor  of  the  restau- 
rant, a  Kaluga  peasant,  Ivan  Fedotych,  who  rented  half 
the  apartments  of  the  Zimin  houses,  in  order  to  sublet 
them  to  other  people.     A  waiter,  a  boy  of  about  eighteen 

28 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  29 

years  of  age,  lean,  hook-nosed,  sallow-faced,  ran  up  to 
him.  "  Take  the  gentleman  to  the  census-takers :  they 
have  gone  to  the  main  wing,  above  the  well." 

The  lad  threw  down  the  napkin,  put  on  an  overcoat 
over  his  white  shirt  and  white  trousers,  and  a  cap  with 
a  large  vizor,  and,  rapidly  moving  his  white  legs,  led  me 
through  a  back  door  which  shut  with  a  block.  In  the 
nasty,  stinking  kitchen  in  the  vestibule  we  met  an  old 
woman  who  was  cautiously  carrying  terribly  malodorous 
guts  that  were  wrapped  in  a  rag.  From  the  vestibule  we 
went  down  into  an  inclined  yard,  which  was  all  filled  up 
with  frame  buildings  on  lower  stone  stories.  The  stench 
in  this  yard  was  very  great.  The  centre  of  this  stench 
was  a  privy,  near  which  there  was  always  a  crowd,  no 
matter  how  often  I  passed  there.  The  privy  itself  was 
not  a  place  of  defecations,  but  it  served  as  an  indication 
of  the  place  near  which  it  was  customary  to  defecate.  It 
was  impossible  not  to  notice  this  place,  whenever  one 
crossed  the '  yard ;  it  was  oppressive  to  enter  into  the 
pungent  atmosphere  of  the  stench  which  rose  from  it. 

The  lad  cautiously  guarded  his  white  pantaloons,  care- 
fully led  me  past  this  spot  over  the  frozen  impurities,  and 
walked  in  the  direction  of  one  of  the  buildings.  The 
men  who  were  crossing  the  yard  and  the  galleries  stopped 
to  take  a  look  at  me.  Apparently  a  neatly  dressed  man 
was  a  rarity  in  these  places. 

The  lad  asked  a  woman  whether  she  had  not  seen 
where  the  census-takers  were,  and  three  men  at  once 
answered  this  question ;  some  said  that  they  were  above 
the  well ;  others  said  that  they  had  gone  from  there,  and 
were  now  with  Nikita  Ivanovich.  An  old  man  in  a  shirt, 
who  was  fixing  himself  near  the  privy,  said  that  they 
were  in  Number  30.  The  lad  decided  that  this  informa- 
tion was  the  most  reliable,  and  so  led  me  to  Number  30, 
under  the  cover  of  a  basement  story,  into  darkness  and  into 
a  stench  which  was  different  from  the  one  in  the  yard.    We 


30  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

descended  lower  and  walked  along  an  earth  floor  of  a 
dark  corridor.  As  we  were  walking  along  the  corridor, 
a  door  was  opened  with  a  start,  and  a  drunken  old  man 
in  a  shirt,  who  was  evidently  not  a  peasant,  rushed  out 
from  the  room.  A  washerwoman,  with  sleeves  rolled  up. 
and  soapy  hands,  was  driving  and  pushing  this  man  with 
a  piercing  shriek.  Vanya,  my  guide,  pushed  the  drunken 
man  aside  and  rebuked  him. 

"  It  will  not  do  to  make  such  a  racket,"  he  said,  "  and 
you  are  an  officer,  too." 

Then  we  arrived  at  the  door  of  Number  30.  Vanya 
pulled  the  door :  it  smacked,  having  been  stuck,  and 
opened,  and  we  were  surrounded  by  vapours  of  soap-suds 
and  by  the  pungent  odour  of  bad  victuals  and  of  tobacco, 
and  entered  into  complete  darkness.  The  windows  were 
on  the  opposite  side,  while  nearer  to  us  were  board 
corridors  on  the  right  and  on  the  left,  and  little  doors  at 
all  kinds  of  angles,  leading  into  rooms  that  were  unevenly 
partitioned  off  by  shingles  that  were  painted  white  with 
a  watery  paint.  In  a  dark  room  on  the  left  could  be 
seen  a  woman  washing  something  in  a  trough.  Through 
a  door  on  the  right  an  old  woman  could  be  seen. 
Through  another  open  door  I  saw  a  bearded,  red-faced 
peasant  in  bast  shoes,  who  was  sitting  on  a  bed  bench  ; 
he  was  holding  his  hands  on  his  knees,  swaying  his  bast 
shoe  covered  feet,  and  looking  gloomily  at  them. 

At  the  end  of  the  corridor  there  was  a  little  door  which 
led  into  the  room  where  the  census-takers  were.  This 
was  the  room  of  the  landlady  of  the  whole  of  Number  30, 
She  rented  the  whole  number  from  Ivan  Fedotych,  and 
let  it  out  to  permanent  renters  and  to  night  lodgers.  In 
this  tiny  room  a  student  census-taker,  with  his  cards,  was 
sitting  under  a  foil  image  and,  like  an  investigating  mag- 
istrate, examining  a  man  in  a  shirt  and  vest.  This  was 
the  landlady's  friend,  who  was  answering  the  (questions  for 
her.     Here  was  also  the  landlady  —  an  old   woman  — 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  31 

and  two  curious  lodgers.  When  I  arrived,  the  room  was 
crowded  to  its  fullest  capacity.  I  pushed  my  way  to  the 
table.  The  student  and  I  exchanged  greetings,  and  he 
continued  his  questions.  I  looked  around  and  questioned 
the  inmates  of  this  apartment  for  my  own  purposes. 

It  turned  out  that  in  this  apartment  I  did  not  find  one 
on  whom  my  benefaction  could  be  bestowed.  In  spite  of 
the  poverty,  smallness,  and  dirt  of  these  quarters,  which 
startled  me  when  I  compared  them  with  the  mansion  in 
which  I  lived,  the  landlady  hved  in  comparative  ease, 
as  compared  with  the  poor  inhabitants  of  the  cities  ;  but 
in  comparison  with  the  village  poverty,  with  which  I  was 
well  acquainted,  she  lived  even  in  luxury.  She  had  a 
feather  bed,  a  quilted  coverlet,  a  samovar,  a  fur  coat, 
a  cupboard  with  dishes.  The  landlady's  friend  had  the 
same  well-to-do  appearance  :  he  even  had  a  watch  with  a 
chain.  The  lodgers  were  poor,  but  there  was  not  one  who 
demanded  immediate  aid.  Those  who  wanted  help  were 
the  woman  at  the  wash-trough,  who  had  been  abandoned 
with  her  children  by  her  husband,  an  old  widow,  who, 
as  she  said,  had  no  means  of  support,  and  that  peasant  in 
the  bast  shoes,  who  told  me  that  he  had  not  had  that  day 
anything  to  eat.  But  upon  closer  inquiry  it  appeared 
that  all  these  persons  were  not  in  particular  want,  and 
that,  in  order  that  I  might  aid  them,  I  should  have  to 
become  better  acquainted  with  them. 

When  I  proposed  to  the  woman,  whom  her  husband 
had  abandoned,  to  put  the  children  in  a  children's  home, 
she  became  confused,  fell  to  musing,  and  thanked  me, 
but  apparently  it  was  not  what  she  wanted  :  she  pre- 
ferred a  contribution  in  money.  Her  eldest  girl  helped 
her  to  wash,  and  her  middle  girl  took  care  of  her  boy. 
The  old  woman  wanted  very  much  to  go  to  a  poor- 
house,  but,  upon  examining  her  corner,  I  saw  that  the 
woman  was  not  in  straits.  She  had  a  httle  trunk  with 
some  possessions,  a  teapot  with  a  tin  mouth,  and  Mont- 


32  WHAT    tiHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

pensier  boxes  with  sugar  and  tea.  She  knitted  stockings 
and  gloves,  and  received  a  monthly  allowance  from  a 
benefactress.  But  the  peasant  was  evidently  not  so 
much  in  need  of  something  to  eat  as  of  something  to 
drink,  and  anything  wliich  might  have  been  given  to  him 
would  have  gone  into  the  tavern. 

Thus  these  quarters  did  not  contain  people  with  whom, 
I  thought,  the  house  was  filled,  such  as  I  could  make 
happy  by  giving  them  money.  These  poor,  so  it  seemed 
to  me,  were  of  a  doubtful  character.  I  made  a  note  of 
the  old  woman,  of  the  woman  with  the  children,  and 
of  the  peasant,  and  decided  that  it  would  be  necessary  to 
look  after  them,  but  only  after  I  should  have  busied 
myself  with  those  particularly  unfortunate  people  whom  I 
expected  to  find  in  the  house.  I  decided  that  the  aid 
would  have  to  be  furnished  in  a  given  order,  —  at  first  to 
those  who  needed  it  most,  and  then  to  these  people.  But 
in  the  next  quarters,  and  in  the  next,  it  was  the  same : 
the  people  were  all  such  as  had  to  be  investigated  before 
any  aid  was  offered  them.  There  were  no  unfortunates  to 
whom  money  was  to  be  given,  and  who,  having  been 
unhappy,  would  become  happy.  Though  I  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  say  so,  I  began  to  be  disappointed,  because 
I  did  not  find  in  these  houses  anything  I  had  expected.  I 
had  expected  to  find  people  of  a  particular  kind,  but  when 
I  had  made  the  round  of  all  the  quarters,  I  convinced  my- 
self that  the  inhabitants  of  these  houses  were  not  at  all  a 
particular  kind  of  men,  but  precisely  such  men  as  I  saw 
myself  surrounded  by.  Even  as  among  us,  there  were 
among  them  people  who  were  more  or  less  good,  more  or 
less  bad,  more  or  less  happy,  more  or  less  unhappy.  The 
unfortunate  ones  were  just  as  unfortunate  as  those  among 
us,  whose  misfortune  was  not  in  external  conditions  but 
within  themselves,  —  a  misfortune  which  could  not  be 
mended  by  a  bill. 


VI. 

The  inniates  of  these  houses  form  the  lower  urban 
population,  of  whom  there  must  be  more  than  one  hun- 
dred thousand  in  Moscow.  Here,  in  this  house,  there  are 
representatives  of  all  kinds  of  this  population  ;  here  you 
will  find  small  masters  and  proprietors,  bootmakers,  brush- 
makers,  joiners,  turners,  shoemakers,  tailors,  blacksmiths, 
drivers,  self-supporting  traders  and  huckstresses,  washer- 
women, second-hand  dealers,  usurers,  day-labourers  and 
people  without  any  definite  occupations,  and  beggars, 
and  prostitutes. 

Here  are  many  of  the  same  class  of  people  which  I 
saw  in  front  of  Lyapinski  House,  but  here  they  are  scat- 
tered among  working  people.  Besides,  those  others  I  had 
seen  at  their  very  worst  time,  when  everything  was  spent 
in  food  and  drink,  and  they,  freezing  and  starving  and 
driven  out  of  the  restaurants,  were  waiting,  as  for  the 
heavenly  manna,  for  admission  into  the  free  lodging- 
house,  and  from  there  to  the  longed-for  jail,  in  order  to 
be  sent  back  to  their  domicile ;  whereas  here  I  saw  them 
amidst  a  majority  of  labouring  people,  and  at  a  time  when 
in  one  way  or  another  they  had  gained  three  or  five  kopeks 
for  a  night's  lodging,  and  at  times  roubles  for  food  and 
drink. 

And,  no  matter  how  strange  this  may  sound,  I  here 
experienced  nothing  resembling  the  feeling  which  I  had 
experienced  in  Lyapinski  House ;  on  the  contrary,  dur- 
ing my  first  round,  both  I  and  the  students  experienced 
almost  a  pleasant  sensation,  —  but  why  do  I  say  "  almost 
pleasant  "  ?      That  is  not  true :  the  sensation  evoked  by 

33 


34  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

the  intercourse  with  these  people,  no  matter  how  strange 
this  may  seem,  was  simply  exceedingly  pleasant. 

The  first  impression  was  that  the  majority  of  people 
who  were  living  here  were  labourers  and  very  good 
people. 

The  greater  part  of  the  inmates  we  found  at  work,  — 
the  washerwomen  over  their  troughs,  the  joiners  at  their 
tables,  the  shoemakers  on  their  stools.  The  close  quar- 
ters were  filled  with  people,  and  they  were  working  ener- 
getically and  merrily.  There  was  an  odour  of  workmen's 
perspiration,  and  of  hides  at  the  shoemaker's,  and  of  shav- 
ings at  the  joiner's,  and  frequently  we  heard  songs,  and 
saw  the  bared  muscular  arms  which  went  through  the 
habitual  motions  with  rapidity  and  with  agility.  We 
were  everywhere  met  with  mirth  and  with  kindness : 
nearly  everywhere  our  intrusion  into  the  habitual  life  of 
these  people  failed  to  rouse  those  ambitions,  that  desire  to 
show  their  importance  and  to  snub,  which  the  appearance 
of  the  census-takers  produced  in  the  majority  of  the  quar- 
ters of  the  well-to-do  people  ;  on  the  contrary,  to  all  our 
questions  these  people  answered  as  was  proper,  without 
ascribing  any  special  significance  to  them.  Our  questions 
merely  served  for  them  as  a  cause  for  amusement  and 
jesting  as  to  how  one  was  to  be  written  down,  who  was 
to  be  put  down  for  two,  and  what  two  would  stand  for 
one,  and  so  forth. 

Many  we  found  at  dinner  or  at  tea,  and  to  our  greeting, 
"  Bread  and  salt,"  or  "  Tea  and  sugar,"  they  invariably 
replied  by,  "  Please  to  join  us,"  and  even  moved  aside  to 
make  place  for  us.  Instead  of  purlieus  of  a  constantly 
changing  population,  which  we  had  expected  to  find  here, 
it  turned  out  that  in  this  house  there  were  many  apart- 
ments where  people  had  lived  for  a  long  time.  A  joiner 
and  his  workmen,  a  shoemaker  and  his  master  workman 
had  lived  for  ten  years  in  one  place.  At  the  shoemaker's 
it  was  very  dirty  and  crowded,  but  the  people  at  work 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  35 

were  very  cheerful.  I  tried  to  talk  to  one  of  the  work- 
men, as  I  wished  to  get  from  him  an  account  of  the 
wretchedness  of  his  condition  and  of  his  indebtedness  to 
the  master,  but  the  workman  did  not  understand  me  and 
spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  his  master  and  his  life. 

In  one  apartment  there  hved  an  old  man  and  his  wife. 
They  were  selling  apples.  Their  room  was  warm,  clean, 
and  full  of  every  good  thing.  The  floor  was  carpeted  with 
straw  matting,  which  they  got  in  the  apple  shop.  There 
were  trunks,  a  safe,  a  samovar,  and  dishes.  In  the  cor- 
ner were  a  number  of  images,  and  in  front  of  them  two 
lamps  were  burning.  Covered  fur  coats  were  hanging  on 
the  wall  behind  a  sheet.  The  old  woman  had  star-shaped 
wrinkles :  she  was  kind  and  talkative,  and  apparently 
took  delight  in  her  quiet,  well-arranged  life. 

Ivan  Feddtych,  the  proprietor  of  the  restaurant  and  the 
landlord  of  the  apartments,  came  from  the  restaurant  and 
walked  with  us.  He  jested  cheerfully  with  many  renters, 
calling  them  by  their  names  and  patronymics,  and  gave 
us  short  sketches  of  them.  They  were  all  people  like 
the  rest  of  us,  —  Martin  Sem^noviches,  Peter  Petroviches, 
Marya  Ivanovnas,  —  people  who  did  not  consider  them- 
selves unfortunate,  and  who  indeed  were  like  the  rest  of 
us. 

We  had  prepared  ourselves  to  see  nothing  but  what 
would  be  terrible ;  but,  instead  of  anything  terrible,  we 
saw  nothing  but  what  was  good,  what  involuntarily  evoked 
our  respect.  And  of  these  good  people  there  was  such  a 
multitude  that  the  ragged,  hopeless,  idle  people,  who  now 
and  then  were  met  with  among  them,  did  not  impair  the 
general  impression. 

The  students  were  not  so  startled  by  it  as  I  was. 
They  were  simply  out  doing  something  useful  for  science, 
as  they  thought,  and  at  the  same  time  made  their  casual 
observations ;  but  I  was  a  benefactor,  —  I  went  out  to 
help  the  unfortunate,  lost,  corrupt  people,   whom  I  had 


36  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

expected  to  find  in  this  house.  Suddenly,  instead  of  un- 
fortunate, lost,  and  corrupt  people,  I  saw  a  large  number 
of  calm,  satisfied,  happy,  kind,  and  very  good  working 
people. 

This  impressed  itself  upon  me  very  vividly,  whenever 
I  met  in  these  quarters  that  very  crying  want  which  I 
was  prepared  to  assist. 

Whenever  I  met  this  want,  I  found  that  it  was  already 
attended  to,  and  that  the  aid  which  I  wanted  to  offer 
to  it  had  already  been  given.  This  aid  had  been  given 
before  me,  and  by  whom  ?  By  those  same  unfortunate, 
corrupt  creatures,  whom  I  was  prepared  to  help,  and  it 
was  given  in  a  way  which  I  could  not  emulate. 

In  a  basement  lay  a  lonely  old  man  who  was  sick  with 
the  typhus.  The  old  man  did  not  have  a  friend.  A 
widow  with  a  little  girl,  a  stranger  to  him,  but  a  neigh- 
bour of  his,  took  care  of  him,  brought  tea  to  him,  and 
bought  medicine  for  him  with  her  own  money.  In  an- 
other apartment  a  woman  was  lying  sick  with  puerperal 
fever.  A  woman  who  was  making  a  living  by  debauch 
rocked  the  baby,  made  a  sucking-rag  for  it,  and  for  two 
days  did  not  go  out  to  her  calling.  A  girl  who  was  left  an 
orphan  was  taken  into  the  family  of  a  tailor,  who  him- 
self had  three  children.  Thus  the  only  unfortunates  that 
were  left  were  some  idle  people,  officials,  scribes,  lackeys 
out  of  a  job,  beggars,  drunkards,  prostitutes,  cliildren,  who 
could  not  be  at  once  helped  with  money,  but  who  had 
to  be  carefully  examined,  taken  care  of,  and  given  work. 
I  was  in  search  of  pure  unfortunates,  such  as  were  unfor- 
tunate through  poverty,  and  as  could  be  helped  by  giving 
them  of  our  abundance ;  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  failed 
to  find  such,  and  that  all  the  unfortunates  I  came  across 
were  such  that  much  time  and  care  would  have  to  be 
expended  on  them. 


VII. 

The  unfortunates  whom  I  marked  down  naturally  clas- 
sified themselves  in  my  imagination  according  to  three 
categories,  namely,  as  people  who  had  lost  their  former 
profitable  situation  and  were  waiting  to  return  to  it  (such 
people  belonged  both  to  the  higher  and  to  the  lower  con- 
ditions of  life)  ;  then  prostitutes,  of  whom  there  were  verj- 
many  in  these  houses  ;  and  the  third  category,  —  children. 
The  largest  number  marked  down  by  me  belonged  to  the 
first  category,  to  those  who  had  lost  their  profitable  sit- 
uations and  were  wishing  to  return  to  them.  Of  such 
people,  especially  of  those  who  belonged  to  the  burgher 
and  the  official  worlds,  there  were  very  many  in  these 
houses.  In  nearly  all  the  quarters  which  we  entered 
with  the  landlord,  Ivan  Fedotych,  we  were  told  by  him : 
"  Here  you  do  not  need  to  write  the  census  card  your- 
selves ;  here  you  will  find  a  man  who  can  do  all  that,  if 
only  he  is  not  on  a  spree." 

Ivan  Fedotych  w^ould  call  such  a  man  by  his  first  name 
and  patronymic,  and  it  always  turned  out  to  be  one  of 
those  men  who  had  fallen  from  a  higher  condition  of  hfe. 
To  Ivan  Fedotych's  call  an  impoverished  gentleman  or 
official  would  creep  out  from  some  dark  corner,  and  he 
would  generally  be  drunk  and  always  undressed.  If  he 
was  not  drunk,  he  was  always  delighted  to  take  hold 
of  the  matter  which  was  placed  before  him,  significantly 
shook  his  head,  frowned,  put  in  his  remarks  with  learned 
terms,  and  with  cautious  tenderness  held  the  clean, 
printed  red  card  in  his  trembling,  dirty  hands,  and  with 
contempt  eyed  his  fellow  lodgers,  as  though  triumphantly 

37 


38  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

asserting  the  superiority  of  his  education  before  those 
who  had  humiHated  him  so  often.  He  was  obviously 
glad  to  commune  with  that  world  where  they  printed 
cards  on  red  paper,  and  where  he  had  once  been 
himself.  To  my  inquiries  about  his  hfe,  such  a  man 
nearly  always  rephed  readily  and  began  with  enthusiasm 
to  recite,  like  a  prayer  learned  by  rote,  the  history  of  those 
calamities  to  which  he  had  been  subjected,  and,  above  all, 
of  his  former  position,  where  he  belonged  according  to  his 
education. 

Such  men  were  widely  scattered  through  Rzhanov 
House.  One  of  the  apartments  is  solidly  occupied  by 
such  men  and  women.  Wlien  we  came  up  to  it,  Ivan 
Feddtych  said  to  us :  "  Here  comes  the  apartment  of  the 
gentry."  The  apartment  was  quite  full :  nearly  all  of 
them,  about  forty,  were  at  home.  More  thoroughly  fallen, 
unfortunate,  neglected  old  persons,  and  pale,  hopeless 
young  persons  could  not  be  found  in  the  whole  house.  I 
talked  with  some  of  them.  It  was  nearly  always  the 
same  story,  only  in  various  degrees  of  evolution.  Each  of 
them  had  been  rich,  or  a  father,  a  brother,  uncle,  had  been 
or  still  was  rich,  or  his  father,  or  he  himself,  had  occupied 
a  fine  position.  Then  a  misfortune  occurred,  caused  by 
some  envious  person,  or  by  his  own  goodness,  or  by  some 
special  accident,  and  he  lost  everything,  and  now  was 
doomed  to  perish  in  these  improper,  hateful  surroundings, 
—  covered  with  lice,  dressed  in  rags,  among  drunkards 
and  harlots,  feeding  on  liver  and  bread,  and  extending  the 
hand  for  alms. 

All  the  thoughts,  wishes,  and  recollections  of  these 
people  are  directed  only  to  the  past.  The  present  ap- 
pears to  them  as  something  unnatural,  abominable,  and 
unworthy  of  attention.  Not  one  of  them  has  a  present. 
They  have  only  recollections  of  the  past  and  expectations 
in  the  future,  which  may  be  realized  at  any  moment,  and 
for  the  realization  of  which  very  little  is  needed,  but  this 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  39 

very  little  is  wanting  and  is  not  to  be  had,  and  so  life  is 
being  uselessly  ruined,  one  having  suffered  for  a  year, 
another  for  five,  and  a  third  for  thirty  years.  One  needs 
only  to  dress  himself  in  decent  clothes,  in  order  to  make 
his  appearance  before  a  person  who  is  favourably  inclined 
to  him  ;  another  needs  only  to  put  on  decent  clothes,  pay 
his  bills,  and  reach  Or^l ;  a  third  needs  only  to  redeem  his 
mortgaged  property  and  obtain  some  small  means  for 
the  continuation  of  his  case  at  law,  wliich  must  end  in  his 
favour,  and  then  all  will  be  well  again.  They  all  say  that 
they  need  only  something  external,  in  order  that  they 
may  get  back  to  the  condition  which  alone  they  consider 
natural  and  happy  for  them. 

If  I  had  not  been  befogged  by  my  pride  of  virtue,  I 
needed  only  to  scan  a  little  their  young  and  their  old,  for 
the  most  part  weak,  sensual,  but  good  faces,  in  order  to 
understand  that  their  misfortune  was  incorrigible  by 
external  means ;  that  they  could  not  be  happy  in  any 
situation,  if  their  view  of  life  remained  the  same  ;  that 
they  were  not  a  special  class  of  people,  in  unusually 
unfortunate  circumstances,  but  just  such  people  as  we 
were  surrounded  by  on  all  sides,  and  as  we  ourselves  were. 
I  remember  that  my  communion  with  this  class  of  unfor- 
tunates was  particularly  hard  for  me.  Now  I  understand 
why  it  was  so :  I  saw  myself  in  them  as  in  a  mirror.  If 
I  had  stopped  to  think  of  my  life  and  of  the  lives  of  the 
men  of  our  circle,  I  should  have  seen  that  between  us 
there  was  no  essential  difference. 

If  those  who  are  around  me  now  live  in  grand  quarters 
and  in  their  own  houses  on  the  Sivtsev  Vrazhok  and  on 
the  Dmitrovka,  and  not  in  Ezhanov  House,  and  still  eat 
and  drink  palatable  things,  and  not  liver  and  herring  with 
bread,  that  does  not  keep  them  from  being  just  as  un- 
happy. They  are  just  as  dissatisfied  with  their  situation, 
regretting  the  past  and  wishing  for  something  better,  and 
this  better  situation  which  they  wish  for  is  just  such  as 


40  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

the  inmates  of  Rzhanov  House  desii-e,  that  is,  such  as  will 
make  it  possible  for  them  to  work  less  and  make  more 
extensive  use  of  the  labours  of  others.  The  diflerence  is 
only  in  the  degree  and  the  time. 

If  I  had  then  stopped  to  think,  I  should  have  under- 
stood it ;  but  I  did  not  stop  to  think :  I  questioned  these 
people  and  noted  them  down,  hoping  to  aid  them  later, 
after  I  should  have  learned  of  their  conditions  and  their 
needs.  I  did  not  understand  then  that  such  a  man  could 
be  helped  only  by  changing  his  world  conception  ;  but,  in 
order  to  change  the  world  conception  of  another  person, 
a  man  must  first  have  his  own  better  world  conception 
and  Uve  in  accordance  with  it,  whereas  mine  was  just 
such  as  theirs  was,  and  I  lived  in  accordance  with  the 
world  conception  which  had  to  be  changed  in  order  that 
these  people  should  stop  being  unhappy. 

I  did  not  see  that  these  people  were  unhappy,  not 
because  they,  so  to  speak,  lacked  nutritive  food,  but 
because  their  stomachs  were  ruined,  and  they  no  longer 
demanded  nutritive  food,  but  such  as  roused  their 
appetite ;  I  did  not  see  that,  to  aid  them,  I  was  not  to 
offer  them  food,  but  should  cure  their  ruined  stomachs. 
Though  I  am  anticipating  here,  I  will  say  that  I  actually 
did  not  help  a  single  one  of  the  men  whose  names  I  had 
taken  down,  although  for  some  of  them  precisely  that 
was  done  which  they  had  wanted,  and  which,  it  seemed, 
ought  to  have  put  them  on  their  feet.  I  specially  re- 
member three  of  these  people.  All  three  of  them  are, 
after  numerous  upliftings  and  falls,  in  precisely  the  same 
condition  in  which  they  were  three  years  ago. 


VIII. 

The  second  category  of  unfortunates  whom  I  had  hoped 
to  help  later  was  that  of  the  prostitutes ;  of  such  women 
there  is  a  very  large  variety  in  Kzhanov  House,  —  from 
young  ones,  who  resemble  women,  to  old  ones,  terrible  to 
look  at,  who  have  lost  every  human  semblance.  This 
hope  of  helping  the  women,  w^hich  I  had  not  had  in  mind 
before,  arose  under  the  following  circumstance. 

It  was  in  the  middle  of  our  census-taking,  and  we  had 
by  that  time  worked  out  a  certain  mechanical  method  of 
procedure. 

As  we  entered  new  quarters,  we  immediately  asked  for 
the  landlord  of  the  rooms ;  one  of  us  sat  down,  clearing  a 
place  where  he  could  write,  and  a  second  walked  from 
corner  to  corner,  questioning  each  person  separately,  and 
transmitting  the  information  to  the  recorder. 

Upon  entering  one  of  the  apartments  of  the  basement 
story,  a  student  went  to  find  the  landlord,  while  I  began 
to  question  all  those  who  were  in  these  quarters.  The 
quarters  were  arranged  as  follows :  In  the  middle  of  a 
room  twenty  feet  square  there  was  a  stove ;  from  the 
stove  radiated  four  partitions,  forming  four  smaller  com- 
partments. In  the  first  passage  room  there  were  four 
cots  and  two  persons,  —  an  old  man  and  a  woman.  After 
this  came  a  long  compartment :  here  was  the  landlord, 
a  young,  respectable-looking,  extremely  pale  burgher, 
dressed  in  a  gray  cloth  coat  without  sleeves.  On  the 
left  of  the  first  corner  was  the  third  compartment :  there 
was  a  man  asleep,  no  doubt  drunk,  and  a  woman  in  a 

pink    blouse,    which    was    open  in    front    and    gathered 

41 


42  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

behind ;  the  fourth  compartment  was  beyond  a  partition : 
it  was  entered  from  the  landlord's  room. 

The  student  went  to  the  landlord's  room,  and- 1  stopped 
in  the  passage  room  to  question  the  old  man  and  the 
woman.  The  man  was  a  master  printer,  but  now  had  no 
means  of  support.  The  woman  was  the  wife  of  a  cook. 
I  went  to  the  third  compartment  and  questioned  the 
woman  in  the  blouse  about  the  sleeping  man.  She  said 
that  he  was  a  guest.  I  asked  the  woman  who  she  was. 
She  said  she  was  a  Moscow  burgher  woman. 

"  What  is  your  occupation  ?  " 

She  laughed,  and  gave  me  no  answer. 

"  How  do  you  support  yourself  ? "  I  repeated,  thinking 
that  she  had  not  understood  my  first  question. 

"  I  sit  in  the  restaurant,"  she  said. 

I  did  not  understand,  and  again  asked : 

"  What  do  you  hve  by  ? " 

She  made  no  reply,  and  only  laughed.  In  the  fourth 
compartment,  where  we  had  not  yet  been,  there  were  also 
heard  laughing  female  voices.  The  landlord  came  out  of 
his  compartment,  and  walked  over  to  us.  He  had  appar- 
ently heard  my  questions  and  the  woman's  answer.  He 
cast  a  stern  glance  upon  the  woman,  and  turned  to  me : 
"  A  prostitute,"  he  said,  obviously  satisfied,  because  he 
knew  the  word  which  is  used  in  official  language  and 
pronounced  it  correctly.  Having  said  this,  he  with  a 
faint  and  respectful  smile  of  satisfaction,  which  was  meant 
for  me,  turned  to  the  woman.  The  moment  he  turned  to 
her,  his  whole  face  was  changed.  Speaking  in  that  pecul- 
iar, contemptuous,  quick  tone,  with  which  one  addresses 
a  dog,  and  without  looking  at  her,  he  said : 

"  What  use  is  there  of  talking  bosh,  ',1  sit  in  a  restau- 
rant '  ?  You  sit  in  a  restaurant !  Say  outright,  —  a 
prostitute,"  he  repeated  the  word.  "  She  does  not  know 
how  to  call  herself." 

His  tone  offended  me. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  43 

"  It  is  not  proper  for  us  to  put  her  to  shame,"  I  said. 
"  If  all  of  us  lived  in  godly  fashion,  there  would  be  none 
of  them." 

"  Well,  that  is  so,"  said  the  landlord,  with  an  unnatural 
smile. 

"  Then  we  ought  not  to  rebuke  them,  but  to  pity  them. 
Is  it  their  fault  ? " 

I  do  not  remember  how  I  expressed  myself,  but  I 
remember  that  I  was  offended  by  the  contemptvious  tone 
of  this  youthful  landlord  of  the  quarters  which  were  full 
of  women  whom  he  called  prostitutes,  and  I  was  sorry 
for  this  woman,  and  so  I  expressed  both  sentiments.  The 
moment  I  had  said  this,  the  boards  of  the  beds  in  the 
compartment  where  the  female  voices  were  heard  began 
to  creak,  and  above  the  partition,  which  did  not  reach  as 
high  as  the  ceiling,  there  rose  a  curly,  dishevelled  female 
head  with  small,  swollen  eyes  and  a  shining  red  face,  and 
after  her  a  second  and  a  third  head.  They  were  evidently 
standing  on  their  beds,  and  all  three  of  them  stretched 
their  necks  and  with  bated  breath  and  strained  attention 
looked  silently  at  us. 

There  ensued  an  embarrassing  silence.  The  student, 
who  had  been  smiling  before,  became  serious ;  the  land- 
lord became  embarrassed,  and  lowered  his  eyes ;  the 
women  did  not  dare  to  draw  breath,  and  looked  at  me, 
and  waited.  I  was  embarrassed  more  than  the  rest.  I 
had  not  expected  to  see  a  casual  word  produce  such  an 
effect.  It  was  as  though  Ezekiel's  field  of  death,  covered 
with  dead  bones,  had  quivered  by  the  touch  of  th^  spirit, 
and  the  dead  bones  had  come  to  life.  I  unwittingly 
uttered  a  word  of  love  and  of  compassion,  and  this  word 
acted  upon  all  persons  as  though  they  had  all  been  waiting 
for  this  word,  in  order  to  cease  being  corpses,  and  come  to 
life  again.  They  kept  looking  at  me  and  waiting  for 
what  would  come  next.  They  were  waiting  for  me  to  say 
those  words  and  do  those  acts  which  would  make  the 


44  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

bones  come  together,  be  covered  with  flesh,  and  come  to 
life  again.  But  I  felt  that  I  did  not  possess  those  words 
nor  those  acts  with  which  I  might  continue  what  I  had 
begun ;  I  felt  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that  I  had  lied, 
that  I  was  precisely  such  as  they  were,  and  that  I  had 
nothing  else  to  say,  and  I  began  to  record  the  names  and 
occupations  of  all  the  persons  in  these  quarters. 

This  incident  led  me  into  a  new  delusion,  —  into  the 
thought  that  it  was  possible  to  help  these  unfortunates 
also.  In  my  self-conceit  it  then  appeared  to  me  that 
that  was  easy.  I  said  to  myself :  "  We  will  note  down 
these  women  also  and  later  we  "  (I  did  not  render  myself 
any  account  as  to  who  these  "  we  "  were)  "  shall  busy  our- 
selves with  them."  I  imagined  that  we,  those  men  who 
for  the  period  of  several  generations  had  brought  these 
women  to  such  a  state,  would  one  beautiful  day  bethink 
ourselves  and  mend  all  that  at  once.  And  yet,  if  I  had 
only  recalled  my  conversation  with  that  lewd  woman  who 
was  rocking  the  baby  of  the  woman  sick  in  childbirth,  I 
might  have  comprehended  the  whole  madness  of  this 
supposition. 

When  we  saw  this  woman  with  the  child,  we  thought 
that  it  was  her  child.  In  reply  to  the  question  who  she 
was,  she  answered  outright,  "  A  girl."  She  did  not  say, 
"  A  prostitute."  It  was  only  that  burgher,  the  landlord, 
who  had  used  that  terrible  word.  My  supposition  that 
she  had  a  baby  gave  me  the  idea  of  bringing  her  out  of 
her  situation.     I  asked  : 

"  Is  this  your  child  ?  " 

"  No,  it  belongs  to  this  woman." 

"  Why,  then,  do  you  rock  it  ? " 

"  She  asked  me  to  :  she  is  dying." 

Though  my  supposition  proved  incorrect,  I  continued  to 
speak  to  her  in  the  same  spirit.  I  asked  her  who  she  was, 
and  how  she  had  come  to  her  present  condition.  She 
cheerfully  and  in  a  simple  manner  told   me  her  story. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  45 

She  was  the  daughter  of  a  factory  hand,  a  Moscow 
burgher.  She  had  been  left  an  orphan,  and  her  aunt  took 
her  to  her  house.  From  her  aunt's  she  started  frequenting 
the  restaurants.  Her  aunt  was  dead  now.  When  I  asked 
her  whether  she  did  not  want  to  change  her  manner  of 
life,  my  question  apparently  did  not  even  interest  her. 
Indeed,  how  could  the  proposition  of  something  quite 
impossible  interest  a  person  ?     She  smiled,  and  said : 

"  But  who  will  take  me  with  my  yellow  police  card  ?" 

"  Suppose  I  found  you  a  place  as  a  cook  ? "  I  said. 

This  idea  occurred  to  me,  because  she  was  a  strong, 
blonde  woman,  with  a  silly-looking  round  face.  Cooks 
are  generally  of  this  description.  My  words  evidently 
displeased  her. 

"  A  cook  !  But  I  cannot  bake  bread,"  she  said,  laugh- 
ing. She  said  that  she  could  not  be  one,  but  I  saw  by 
her  face  that  she  did  not  want  to  be  a  cook,  because  she 
considered  the  position  and  calling  of  a  cook  to  be 
low. 

This  woman,  who  in  the  simplest  manner  possible,  like 
the  widow  of  the  Gospel,  sacrificed  everything  she  had  for 
the  sake  of  the  sick  mother,  like  her  other  companions, 
regarded  the  condition  of  a  working  man  as  low  and  worthy 
of  contempt.  She  was  brought  up  to  live,  without  work- 
ing, and  to  live  a  life  which  by  those  who  surrounded  her 
was  considered  natural  for  her.  In  this  did  her  mis- 
fortune lie.  Through  this  misfortune  she  had  got  into 
her  present  state  and  was  maintaining  herself  in  it.  That 
had  brought  her  to  loaf  in  restaurants.  Which  of  us, 
man  or  woman,  will  correct  her  false  conception  of  life  ? 
Where,  in  our  midst,  are  those  people  who  are  convinced 
that  any  life  of  labour  is  more  respectable  than  a  life  of 
idleness,  —  who  are  convinced  of  it,  and  live  in  accord- 
ance with  that  conviction,  and  in  accordance  with  that 
conviction  value  and  esteem  people  ?  If  I  had  stopped  to 
think  of  it,  I  should  have  comprehended  that  neither  I 


46  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

nor  any  one  else  of  those  whom  I  know  could  cure  this 
disease. 

I  should  have  comprehended  that  those  startled  and 
meek  heads  that  were  thrust  forward  above  the  partition 
were  expressing  nothing  but  amazement  at  the  sympathy 
which  I  had  given  utterance  to,  and  by  no  means  hope  in 
having  their  immorality  mended.  They  do  not  see  the 
immorality  of  their  lives.  They  see  that  they  are  despised 
and  cursed,  but  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  comprehend 
why  they  are  despised.  Their  lives  have  been  passed 
since  childhood  amidst  just  such  women,  who,  they  know 
full  well,  have  always  existed  and  are  necessary  to  society, 
so  necessary  that  there  are  special  officers  whose  duty  it 
is  to  look  after  their  regular  existence.  Besides,  they 
know  that  they  exercise  power  over  men  and  control 
them,  often  more  completely  than  do  other  women.  They 
see  that  their  position  in  society,  despite  the  fact  that 
everybody  curses  them,  is  recognized  by  women  and  by 
men  and  by  the  authorities,  and  so  they  fail  to  under- 
stand what  they  are  to  repent  of  or  why  they  should 
mend. 

During  one  of  the  rounds  a  student  told  me  that  in  one 
of  the  rooms  there  was  a  woman  who  carried  on  a  trade 
with  her  thirteen-year-old  daughter.  As  I  wished  to  save 
this  girl,  I  went  directly  to  that  room.  The  mother  and 
the  daughter  were  living  in  great  poverty.  The  mother, 
a  small,  swarthy  prostitute  of  about  forty  years  of  age, 
was  not  merely  homely,  but  disagreeably  so.  The  daughter 
was  just  as  repulsive.  To  all  my  roundabout  questions 
as  to  their  life,  the  mother  answered  me  curtly,  and  with 
suspicion  and  hostility,  obviously  feeling  me  to  be  an 
enemy  with  evil  intentions  ;  the  daughter  made  no  replies 
and  did  not  look  at  her  mother,  having  evidently  full 
confidence  in  her  mother.  They  did  not  evoke  any  sincere 
pity  in  me,  but  rather  disgust ;  but  I  decided  that  it  was 
necessary,  to  save  the  daughter,  to  get  the  ladies  interested 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  47 

who  sympathized  with  the  miserable  condition  of  these 
women,  and  to  send  them  thither. 

However,  if  I  had  stopped  to  think  of  the  mother's 
long  past,  of  how  she  had  borne,  reared,  and  brought  up 
her  daughter  in  her  condition,  no  doubt  without  the 
slightest  aid  from  people  and  with  heavy  sacrifices ;  if  I 
had  stopped  to  think  of  that  view  of  hfe  which  had  formed 
itself  in  this  woman,  —  I  should  have  understood  that  in 
the  mother's  act  tliere  was  positively  nothing  bad  or 
immoral :  she  was  doing  for  her  daughter  all  she  could, 
that  is,  what  she  considered  best  for  herself.  It  is  possible 
by  force  to  take  the  daughter  away  from  her  mother ;  but 
it  is  impossible  to  convince  the  mother  that  she  is  doing 
wrong  in  selling  her  daughter.  If  it  comes  to  saving,  it 
is  the  mother  that  ought  to  be  saved ;  above  all,  she 
ought  to  be  saved  from  that  view  of  life,  approved  by  all 
men,  which  makes  it  possible  for  a  woman  to  live  out  of 
wedlock,  that  is,  without  bearing  children  and  without 
working,  serving  only  for  the  gratification  of  sensuality. 

If  I  had  stopped  to  think  of  it,  I  should  have  compre- 
hended that  the  majority  of  those  ladies  whom  I  wanted 
to  send  there  for  the  purpose  of  saving  this  girl  not  only 
hved  themselves  without  bringing  forth  children  and 
without  work,  serving  only  the  gratification  of  sensuality, 
but  also  brought  up  their  daughters  for  the  same  life :  one 
mother  takes  her  daughter  to  the  restaurant,  another  takes 
hers  to  court  or  to  balls.  But  the  world  conception  is 
the  same  with  either  mother,  namely,  that  a  woman  must 
gratify  a  man's  lust,  and  that  for  this  she  has  to  be  fed, 
and  dressed,  and  taken  care  of.  How,  then,  can  our  ladies 
improve  this  woman  and  her  daughter  ? 


IX. 

MoEE  extravagant  still  was  my  relation  to  the  children. 
In  my  capacity  of  benefactor  I  turned  my  attention  to 
the  children  also,  wishing  to  save  the  innocent  creatures 
that  w^ere  going  to  perdition  in  this  den  of  debauch,  and 
took  down  their  names,  intending  to  busy  myself  with 
them  later. 

Among  the  children  I^was  particularly  struck  by  twelve- 
year-old  Serezha.  This  bright,  wide-awake  boy,  who  had 
been  living  at  a  shoemaker's,  but  was  now  left  without  a 
home,  because  his  master  was  in  jail,  I  pitied  with  my 
whole  soul,  and  I  wanted  to  do  him  some  good. 

I  will  now  tell  how  my  attempt  at  benefiting  him 
ended,  because  the  story  of  this  boy  shows  better  than 
anything  my  false  position  in  my  capacity  as  benefactor. 
I  took  the  boy  to  my  house,  and  put  him  in  the  kitchen, 
—  it  was  certainly  impossible  to  take  a  lousy  boy  out  of 
the  den  of  debauch  into  my  children's  rooms !  And  I 
considered  myself  particularly  good  and  kind,  because  he 
did  not  embarrass  me,  but  the  servants  in  the  kitchen, 
and  because  it  was  not  I  who  fed  him,  l)ut  our  cook,  and 
because  I  gave  him  some  old  clothes  to  wear. 

The  boy  stayed  about  a  week.  During  this  time  I  once 
or  twice,  in  passing  him,  said  a  few  words  to  him,  and 
during  my  constitutional  called  on  a  shoemaker  I  knew, 
offering  him  the  boy  as  an  apprentice.  A  peasant,  who 
happened  to  call  at  my  house,  invited  him  to  join  his 
family  in  the  village :  the  boy  refused,  and  within  a  week 
disappeared.  I  went  to  Ezhanov  House  to  inquire  about 
him.  He  had  returned  there,  but  when  I  called  he  was 
not  at  home.     This  was  the  second  day  he  had  been  going 

48 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  49 

to  Pryesnenski  Ponds,  where  he  hired  out  at  thirty  kopeks 
a  day  to  act  as  a  costumed  wild  man  leading  an  elephant 
in  a  procession.  They  were  giving  some  kind  of  a  show 
there.  I  called  a  second  time,  but  he  was  so  ungrateful 
that  he  evidently  avoided  me. 

If  I  had  then  stopped  to  think  of  the  life  of  this  boy 
and  of  my  own,  I  should  have  comprehended  that  the 
boy  was  spoiled  by  this,  that  he  had  discovered  the  possi- 
bility of  a  merry  hfe  without  labour,  that  he  had  lost  the 
habit  of  work.  And  I,  to  benefit  and  improve  him,  took 
him  to  my  house,  where  he  saw  what  ?  My  children,  — 
those  who  were  older  than  he,  and  younger,  and  of  his 
age,  —  who  not  only  had  never  worked  for  themselves, 
but  did  everything  in  their  power  to  give  work  to  others, 
who  soiled  and  ruined  everything  about  them,  and  gorged 
themselves  on  fat,  savoury,  and  sweet  food,  and  broke 
dishes,  and  spilled  and  threw  to  the  dogs  such  food  as  to 
this  boy  appeared  as  dainties.  If  I  took  him  out  of  the 
den  and  brought  him  to  a  good  place,  he  could  not  help  but 
acquire  those  views  which  exist  in  respect  to  life  in  that 
good  place ;  and  from  these  views  he  saw  that  in  a  good 
place  it  was  necessary  to  live  in  such  a  way  as  to  do  no 
work,  and  to  eat  and  drink  sweet  things,  and  to  live  merrily. 

It  is  true,  he  did  not  know  that  my  children  were 
working  very  hard  to  study  the  declensions  out  of  the 
Latin  and  the  Greek  grammars,  and  he  would  not  have  been 
able  to  comprehend  the  aims  of  these  labours.  But  it  is  im- 
possible to  overlook  the  fact  that,  if  he  had  comprehended 
this,  the  effect  of  my  children's  example  would  have  been 
more  powerful  still.  He  would  have  comprehended  that 
my  children  were  being  educated  in  such  a  way  that  they 
might  have  nothing  to  do  at  present  and  should  in  the 
future,  by  making  use  of  their  diploma,  be  able  to  work 
as  little  as  possible  and  enjoy  the  benefits  of  hfe  as  much 
as  possible.  He  understood  this,  and  so  did  not  go  with 
the  peasant  to  look  after  his  cattle  and  eat  potatoes  and 


50  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

driuk  kvas  with  him,  but,  instead,  went  to  the  Zoological 
Garden,  to  lead  an  elephant  for  thirty  kopeks,  while  clad 
as  a  wild  man. 

I  might  have  comprehended  how  foolish  it  was  of  me, 
who  was  educating  my  children  in  complete  idleness  and 
luxury,  to  correct  other  people  aud  their  children,  who 
were  perishing  from  idleness  in  Rzhanov  House,  which  I 
have  called  a  den,  but  in  which,  however,  three-fourths  of 
the  people  worked  for  themselves  and  for  others.  But  I 
did  not  understand  anything  about  it. 

There  were  very  many  children  in  Rzhanov  House, 
who  were  in  a  most  miserable  state  :  there  were  children 
of  prostitutes,  and  orphans,  and  children  carried  by  beg- 
gars on  the  streets.  They  were  all  very  wretched  ;  but 
my  experience  with  Ser^zha  showed  me  that,  living  the 
life  I  did,  I  was  not  able  to  help  them.  While  Ser^zha 
had  been  living  at  our  house,  I  noticed  in  myself  a  desire 
to  conceal  from  him  our  life,  especially  the  life  of  our 
children.  I  felt  that  all  my  endeavours  to  lead  him  to  a 
good  life  of  labour  were  destroyed  by  the  examples  of  our 
life  and  of  that  of  our  children.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
take  a  child  away  from  a  prostitute,  or  from  beggars.  It 
is  very  easy,  having  money,  to  wash  and  clean  him  up, 
and  dress  him  in  clean  clothes,  feed  him,  and  even  teach 
him  all  kinds  of  sciences ;  but  it  is  very  difficult,  and  even 
impossible,  for  us,  who  do  not  earn  our  bread,  but  do  the 
very  opposite,  to  teach  him  to  earn  his  own  bread,  because 
with  our  examples  and  with  the  material  improvements  of 
his  life,  which  do  not  cost  us  anything,  we  teach  him  the 
very  opposite.  You  can  take  a  puppy  and  feed  him,  and 
teach  him  to  carry  something,  and  enjoy  the  sight  of  him ; 
but  it  is  not  enough  to  rear  and  bring  up  a  man,  and 
teach  him  Greek :  he  has  to  be  taught  to  live,  that  is,  to 
take  less  from  others,  and  give  more  ;  and  we  are  unable 
to  teach  him  to  do  the  opposite,  whether  we  take  him  to 
our  house,  or  send  him  to  a  special  home. 


X. 

I  NO  longer  experienced  that  sentiment  of  compassion 
for  people  and  of  disgust  with  myself  wliich  I  had  expe- 
rienced in  Lyapinski  House :  I  was  all  absorbed  in  the 
desire  to  fulfil  the  work  which  I  had  uudertaken,  —  to  do 
good  to  the  people  whom  I  should  meet  here.  Strange  to 
say,  one  would  think  that  doing  good,  giving  money 
to  others,  is  a  very  good  thing,  and  ought  to  dispose  one 
to  the  love  of  men,  but  the  very  opposite  took  place :  it 
provoked  my  ill-will  and  condemnation  of  people.  In  the 
evening  of  the  first  day's  round  there  happened  a  scene 
exactly  like  the  one  in  Lyapinski  House ;  but  this  scene 
did  not  produce  on  me  the  same  impression  as  in  Lya- 
pinski House,  but  evoked  an  entirely  different  feeling. 
It  began  with  this,  that  in  one  of  the  quarters  I  found 
an  unfortunate  who  demanded  immediate  aid :  it  w^as  a 
hungry  woman,  who  had  not  eaten  for  two  days. 

It  was  like  this :  in  one  very  large,  almost  empty  lodg- 
ing apartment  I  asked  an  old  woman  whether  there  were 
there  any  very  poor  people,  such  as  did  not  have  anything 
to  eat.  The  old  woman  thought  for  awhile  and  men- 
tioned two  persons  ;  then  she  seemed  to  recall  something, 

"  Ohj  yes,  there  is  one  lying  here,"  she  said,  peering 
into  one  of  the  occupied  bunks.  "  This  woman,  I  think, 
has  not  had  anything  to  eat." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?     Who  is  she  ? " 

"  She  was  a  lewd  woman,  but  now  nobody  wants  her, 
so  she  has  no  money  to  buy  anything  with.  The  land- 
lady has  been  pitying  her,  but  she  wants  to  drive  her  out 
now.     Agafya,  oh,  Agafya  ! "  shouted  the  old  woman. 


52  WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

We  walked  up  to  the  bunk,  on  which  something  raised 
itself.  It  was  a  half-gray,  dishevelled  woman,  as  lean  as 
a  skeleton,  in  nothing  but  a  dirty,  torn  shirt,  with  a  pecul- 
iarly beaming  and  arrested  glance.  She  looked  with  an 
arrested  glance  past  us,  with  her  lean  hand  caught  her 
sack  in  order  to  cover  her  bony  breast,  which  could  be 
seen  back  of  her  dirty  and  torn  shirt,  and  almost  barked 
out,  "  What  is  it  ?     What  is  it  ?  " 

I  asked  her  how  she  was  getting  along.  For  a  long 
time  she  could  not  understand  me ;  finally  she  said : 

"  I  do  not  know  myself,  —  they  are  driving  me  out." 

I  asked  her,  —  I  blush  to  write  it  down,  —  I  asked  her 
whether  it  was  true  that  she  had  not  eaten.  She  answered 
in  the  same  feverish  and  rapid  tone,  without  looking  at 
me  : 

"  I  have  not  had  anything  to  eat  yesterday,  or  to-day." 

The  sight  of  this  woman  touched  me,  but  not  as  I  had 
been  touched  in  Lyapinski  House :  there  my  pity  for  the 
people  made  me  feel  ashamed  of  myself,  while  here  I  was 
glad  to  have  at  last  found  wliat  I  had  been  looking  for,  — 
a  hungry  person. 

I  gave  her  a  rouble,  and  I  remember  that  I  was  very 
glad  that  others  saw  it.  When  the  old  woman  noticed  it, 
she,  too,  asked  me  for  some  money.  It  gave  me  such 
pleasure  to  offer  money  that  I  gave  the  old  woman  some, 
without  considering  whether  it  was  right  to  give  her  any, 
or  not.  The  old  woman  saw  me  out  at  the  door,  and  the 
people  who  were  standing  in  the  corridor  heard  her  thank- 
ing me.  Apparently  the  questions  which  I  had  put  in 
respect  to  poverty  had  roused  some  expectations,  and 
several  persons  followed  us.  In  the  corridor  they  began 
to  ask  me  for  some  money.  There  were  among  the  sup- 
plicants some  who  were  evidently  confirmed  drunkards, 
who  roused  a  disagreeable  feeling  in  me ;  but,  having 
given  some  to  the  old  woman,  I  had  no  right  to  refuse 
these  either,  and  I  began  to  distribute  my  money.     While 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  53 

I  was  giving,  others  came  up,  and  in  every  quarter  there 
was  excitement.  People  appeared  on  the  staircases  and 
in  the  galleries,  and  they  followed  me. 

As  I  came  out  into  the  yard,  a  boy,  pushing  his  way 
through  the  crowd,  came  flying  down  the  staircase.  He 
did  not  see  me,  and  he  shouted,  hurriedly,  '•'  He  gave 
Agafya  a  rouble."  Having  run  down-stairs,  the  boy 
joined  the  crowd  that  was  following  me.  I  went  out  into 
the  street;  all  kinds  of  people  followed  me,  begging  for 
money.  I  distributed  all  the  change  1  had,  and  went  into 
an  open  shop  to  ask  the  dealer  to  change  a  ten-rouble 
bill.  Here  the  same  happened  as  in  Lyapinski  House, 
namely,  there  was  a  terrible  crush.  Old  women,  people 
of  the  gentry,  peasants,  children,  crowded  at  the  shop, 
extending  their  hands ;  I  gave  them  money,  asking  a  few 
about  their  lives,  and  making  note  of  them  in  my  memo- 
randum-book. The  dealer  turned  in  the  fur  corners  of 
the  collar  of  his  fur  coat  and  sat  like  an  idol,  now  and 
then  casting  a  glance  at  the  crowd  and  again  directing  his 
eyes  past  me.  Apparently  he  felt,  like  the  rest,  that  it 
was  foohsh,  but  he  could  not  say  so. 

In  Lyapinski  House  I  had  been  horrified  by  the  wretch- 
edness and  the  humiliation  of  the  people,  and  I  felt 
myself  guilty :  I  felt  a  desire  and  a  possibility  of  being 
better.  But  now,  a  similar  scene  produced  an  entirely 
different  effect  upon  me :  in  the  first  place,  I  experienced 
a  malevolent  feeling  toward  many  of  those  who  were 
besieging  me,  and,  in  the  second,  unrest  at  what  the  shop- 
keepers and  janitors  were  thinking  of  me. 

When  I  returned  home  on  that  day,  I  did  not  feel  at  my 
ease.  I  felt  that  what  I  had  done  was  foolish  and  immoral ; 
but,  as  always  happens  in  consequence  of  an  inner  confu- 
sion, I  talked  a  great  deal  about  my  undertaking,  as 
though  I  did  not  in  the  least  doubt  its  success. 

On  the  following  day  I  went  by  myself  to  those  persons 
noted  down  by.  me,  who  seemed  to  me  more  miserable 


54  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

than  the  rest,  and  whom,  I  thought,  it  was  easier  to  help. 
As  I  said,  I  did  not  help  even  one  of  those  persons.  It 
turned  out  that  it  was  much  harder  to  help  them  than  I 
had  thought.  Either  because  I  did  not  know  how,  or 
because  it  was  impossible  to  do  otherwise,  I  only  irritated 
the  people,  without  helping  them.  Before  the  end  of  the 
census-taking  I  visited  Ezhauov  House  several  times,  and 
each  time  the  same  thing  happened :  I  was  surrounded 
by  a  crowd  of  begging  people,  in  the  mass  of  whom  I  was 
completely  lost.  I  felt  the  impossibihty  of  doing  any- 
thing, because  there  were  too  many  of  them,  and  so  I  felt 
an  ill-will  toward  them,  because  there  were  so  many  of 
them  ;  besides,  each  of  them  individually  did  not  gain  my 
favour. 

I  felt  that  each  of  them  was  telling  me  an  untruth  or 
not  the  whole  truth,  and  saw  in  me  only  a  purse  from 
which  one  could  draw  money.  Very  frequently  it  seemed 
to  me  that  the  very  money  which  one  of  them  extorted 
from  me  would  not  improve  his  situation,  but  would  make 
it  worse.  The  more  frequently  I  went  to  these  houses, 
the  more  I  had  intercourse  with  those  people,  the  more 
manifest  did  it  become  to  me  that  it  was  impossible  to  do 
anything ;  but  I  did  not  recede  from  my  set  purpose  till 
the  last  nightly  round  of  the  census. 

I  feel  particularly  ashamed  to  recall  this  last  day's 
round.  Before  that  I  used  to  go  alone,  while  now  we 
went  twenty  of  vis  together.  At  seven  o'clock  there 
gathered  at  my  house  all  those  who  wanted  to  go  with 
me  on  this  last  night's  round.  They  were  mostly  stran- 
gers, —  students,  an  ofhcer,  and  two  of  my  society  acquaint- 
ances, who,  saying  the  customary  "  C'est  tre^s  interessant  !  " 
begged  me  to  receive  them  among  the  number  of  census- 
takers. 

My  society  acquaintances  dressed  themselves  in  pe- 
culiar hunting-jackets  and  high  travelling-boots,  —  a  cos- 
tume which  they  put  on  when  they  went  out  hunting, 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  55 

and  which,  iu  their  opinion,  was  proper  for  a  visit  to  the 
lodging-houses.  They  took  with  them  pecuHar  books  and 
outlandish  pencils.  They  were  in  that  peculiar  state  of 
excitement  iu  which  people  are  who  are  getting  ready  for 
the  chase,  for  a  duel,  or  for  the  war.  From  them  could 
most  clearly  be  seen  the  insipidity  and  falseness  of  our 
situation,  but  the  rest  of  us  were  in  the  same  false  con- 
dition. 

Before  our  start  we  had  a  consultation,  something  like 
a  military  council,  as  to  how  we  should  begin,  how  dis- 
tribute ourselves,  etc.  The  consultation  was  precisely 
like  what  takes  place  in  councils,  assemblies,  and  com- 
mittees, that  is,  everybody  spoke,  not  because  they  had 
anything  to  say,  but  because  they  invented  something  to 
say,  in  order  not  to  fall  behind  the  rest.  In  the  course 
of  these  discussions  nobody  mentioned  anything  about 
philanthropy,  of  which  I  had  spoken  so  frequently. 
Though  I  was  ashamed  to  do  so,  I  felt  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  make  mention  of  the  philanthropic  work,  that 
is,  of  the  taking  note,  during  our  round,  of  all  those  who 
were  in  wretched  circumstances.  I  always  felt  ill  at  ease 
whenever  I  spoke  of  this,  but  here,  amidst  our  excited 
preparation  for  the  expedition,  I  had  the  greatest  difficulty 
in  speaking  about  it.  They  listened  to  me,  as  I  thought, 
wdth  melancholy,  and  all  agreed  with  me  verbally ;  but  it 
was  evident  that  all  knew  that  it  was  foolish,  and  that 
nothing  would  come  of  it,  and  they  all  began  at  once  to 
speak  of  something  else.  This  lasted  till  the  time  when 
we  had  to  go,  and  we  started. 

We  arrived  at  the  dark  restaurant,  where  we  roused 
the  waiters  and  began  to  unpack  our  note-books.  When 
we  were  told  that  the  people  had  heard  of  our  visit  and 
were  leaving  the  quarters,  we  asked  the  landlord  to  shut  the 
gates,  and  we  went  ourselves  into  the  yard  to  talk  to 
the  people  who  were  trying  to  get  away  and  to  assure 
them  that  no  one  would  ask  for  their  police  cards.     I 


56  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

remember  the  strange  and  oppressive  feeling  produced  on 
me  by  those  excited  lodgers :  half -undressed  and  ragged, 
they  appeared  to  me  tall  in  the  lamplight  of  the  dark 
yard ;  frightened  and  terrible  in  their  fright,  they  stood 
in  a  crowd  about  the  malodorous  privy,  listening  to  our 
assurances,  but  not  believing  them ;  they  were  evidently 
prepared  for  anything,  like  baited  beasts,  if  only  they 
could  get  away  from  us. 

Gentlemen  of  every  description  —  as  policemen  and  as 
gendarmes,  and  as  examining  magistrates,  and  as  judges 
—  had  been  harassing  them  all  their  lives,  in  the  cities 
and  in  the  villages,  on  the  roads  and  in  the  streets,  in  the 
restaurants  and  in  the  doss-houses,  —  and  now  these  gen- 
tlemen suddenly  came  and  shut  the  gates  on. them,  merely 
to  count  them  ;  that  was  as  hard  for  them  to  believe  as 
it  would  be  for  hares  to  believe  that  the  dogs  came  to 
count  them,  and  not  to  hunt  them.  But  the  gates  were 
locked  and  the  excited  lodgers  went  to  their  quarters,  and 
we,  dividing  into  groups,  started  on  our  round. 

I  had  the  two  society  gentlemen  and  two  students  with 
me.  In  front  of  us,  in  the"  darkness,  walked  Vanya,  in  an 
overcoat  and  his  white  trousers,  and  with  a  lantern  in  his 
hand,  and  we  followed  him.  We  went  to  the  quarters 
with  which  I  was  acquainted.  The  rooms  were  familiar 
to  me  and  so  were  some  of  the  people,  but  the  majority 
of  the  people  were  new  to  me,  and  the  spectacle  was  new 
and  terrible,  much  more  terrible  than  what  I  had  seen 
near  Lyapinski  House.  All  the  quarters  were  full,  all  the 
cots  were  occupied,  generally  by  two  people.  The  specta- 
cle was  terrible  on  account  of  the  crowded  condition  and 
of  the  intermingling  of  men  and  women.  All  women  who 
were  not  beastly  drunk  were  sleeping  with  men.  Many 
women  with  children  on  narrow  cots  were  sleeping  with 
strange  men.  Terrible  was  the  spectacle  of  the  wretched- 
ness, dirt,  raggedness,  and  fright  of  these  people  ;  and, 
above  all,  terrible  on  account  of  the  enormous  number  of 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  57 

people  who  were  in  this  condition.  There  was  one  apart- 
ment, and  another,  and  a  third,  and  a  tenth,  and  a  twen- 
tieth, and  there  was  no  end  to  them.  Everywhere  the 
same  stench,  the  same  stifling  atmosphere,  the  same 
crowding,  the  same  mingling  of  the  sexes,  the  same  dehri- 
ously  drunken  men  and  women,  and  the  same  fright,  hu- 
mility, and  guilt  on  all  the  faces,  —  and  I  again  felt  ill  at 
ease  and  pained,  as  in  Lyapinski  House,  and  I  understood 
that  what  I  had  undertaken  was  nasty,  stupid,  and,  there- 
fore, impossible.  I  stopped  taking  down  notes  and  ques- 
tioning people,  for  I  knew  that  nothing  would  come  of  it. 
I  was  dreadfully  oppressed.  In  Lyapinski  House  I  had 
been  like  a  man  who  suddenly  sees  a  sore  on  another  man's 
body.  He  is  sorry  for  the  man,  sorry  because  he  did  not 
pity  him  before,  and  he  still  may  hope  to  be  able  to  help 
the  ailing  man.  But  now  I  was  like  a  physician  who 
comes  with  his  medicaments  to  the  patient,  lays  open  his 
sore,  probes  it,  and  must  confess  to  himself  that  he  has 
done  all  that  in  vain,  that  his  medicaments  are  no  good. 


XI. 

This  visit  inflicted  the  last  blow  to  my  self-deception. 
It  became  patent  to  me  that  my  undertaking  was  not 
only  stupid,  but  also  abominable.  But,  although  I  knew 
this,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  not  all  at  once  throw 
up  the  whole  matter :  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  to  con- 
tinue this  occupation,  in  the  first  place,  because  with  my 
article,  my  visits,  and  my  promises  I  had  roused  the  ex- 
pectations of  the  poor,  in  the  second  place,  because  with 
the  same  article  and  with  my  conversations  I  had  roused 
the  sympathy  of  the  benefactors,  many  of  whom  had 
promised  to  me  their  cooperation,  both  by  personal  serv- 
ice and  by  money  contributions.  I  waited  for  both  sides 
to  turn  to  me  with  their  requests,  which  I  should  have  to 
answer  the  best  way  I  knew  how. 

As  to  the  applications  of  the  needy,  this  is  what  took 
place  :  I  received  more  than  one  hundred  letters  and  appli- 
cations ;  these  applications  were  all  from  the  rich  poor,  if  I 
may  express  myself  in  this  fashion.  On  some  of  these  I 
called,  some  I  left  without  a  reply.  Nowhere  did  I  suc- 
ceed in  doing  anything.  All  the  apphcations  to  me  were 
from  persons  who  had  once  been  in  a  privileged  condition 
(I  call  thus  the  condition  in  which  people  receive  more 
from  others  than  they  give),  who  had  lost  it,  and  now 
wanted  to  go  back  to  it.  One  needed  two  hundred  roubles 
in  order  to  bolster  up  his  declining  trade  and  finish  the 
education  of  his  children ;  another  needed  a  photograph- 
gallery;  a  third  wanted  to  pay  debts  and  redeem  his 
decent  clothes ;    a  fourth  needed   a    piano,  in    order    to 

perfect   himself    in   playing  and  support   his  family   by 

58 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  59 

giving  music  lessons.  The  majority  did  riot  determine 
the  exact  sum  and  simply  asked  for  assistance ;  but, 
whenever  I  investigated  their  demands,  it  turned  out  that 
these  demands  grew  in  proportion  with  the  assistance,  and 
they  were  not  satisfied,  and  could  not  be.  I  repeat,  it  is 
very  likely  that  all  that  was  due  to  the  fact  that  I  did  not 
know  how ;  in  any  case,  I  did  not  help  any  one,  although 
I  sometimes  tried  to  do  so. 

As  to  the  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the  benefactors, 
something  very  strange  and  unexpected  took  place.  Of 
all  the  persons  who  had  promised  me  monetary  contribu- 
tions and  had  even  determined  the  sums,  not  one  handed 
me  as  much  as  a  rouble  to  distribute  to  the  poor.  To 
judge  by  the  promises  which  they  had  made  me,  I  could 
count  on  something  like  three  thousand  roubles,  and  of 
all  these  men  not  one  recalled  the  former  conversations 
or  gave  me  a  single  kopek.  The  only  persons  who  gave 
me  anything  were  the  students  who  turned  over  to  me 
the  money  which  they  received  for  their  w^ork  in  taking 
the  census,  which  was,  I  believe,  twelve  roubles.  Thus 
my  whole  undertaking,  which  was  to  have  been  expressed 
in  tens  of  thousands  of  roubles  contributed  by  the  rich, 
and  in  hundreds  and  thousands  of  people  who  were  to  be 
saved  from  wretchedness  and  debauch,  reduced  itself  to 
this,  that  I  distributed  at  haphazard  a  few  tens  of  roubles 
to  those  men  who  extorted  it  from  me,  and  that  I  had  on 
my  hands  twelve  roubles  contributed  by  the  students,  and 
twenty-five  roubles  sent  to  me  by  the  City  Council  for  my 
work  as  superintendent,  which  sums  I  was  at  a  loss  to 
dispose  of. 

The  whole  affair  came  to  an  end.  And  so,  before  my 
departure  to  the  country,  I  went  one  Sunday  morning, 
about  Butter- week,  to  Rzhanov  House,  in  order  to  get  rid 
of  the  thirty-seven  roubles  before  my  departure,  and  to 
distribute  them  to  the  poor.  I  made  the  round  of  the 
familiar  quarters,  and  there  found  one  sick  man  to  whom, 


60  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

I  gave  five  roubles,  I  think.  There  was  no  one  else  to 
give  any  money  to.  But,  as  I  had  not  known  them  in 
the  beginning,  so  I  did  not  know  them  then,  and  so  I 
decided  to  take  counsel  with  Ivan  Feddtych,  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  restaurant,  to  know  to  whom  I  should  give 
the  remaining  thirty-two  roubles. 

It  was  the  first  day  of  Butter-week.  All  were  dressed 
up  and  had  plenty  to  eat,  and  many  were  already  drunk. 
In  the  yard,  near  the  corner  of  the  house,  stood  an  old, 
but  still  hale,  ragpicker,  in  a  torn  gabardine  and  bast 
shoes ;  picking  over  his  booty  in  a  basket,  he  threw  out 
into  heaps  scraps  of  leather  and  of  iron  and  of  something 
else,  and  sang  a  merry  song  in  a  beautiful  and  powerful 
voice.  I  got  into  a  conversation  with  him.  He  was 
seventy  years  old  and  all  alone ;  he  made  a  living  by  his 
occupation  as  a  ragpicker,  and  not  only  did  not  complain, 
but  even  said  that  he  had  enough  to  eat  and  to  get  drunk 
on.  I  asked  him  about  those  who  were  most  in  need. 
He  grew  angry  and  said  outright  that  there  were  no 
needy  persons,  except  drunkards  and  lazybones  ;  but  when 
he  heard  of  my  purpose,  he  asked  me  for  a  nickel  with 
which  to  get  him  a  drink,  and  ran  into  the  restaurant.  I 
went  myself  into  the  restaurant  to  Ivan  Fedotych,  in 
order  to  give  him  what  money  I  had  left  for  distribution. 

The  restaurant  was  full ;  dressed  up  girls  swarmed  from 
door  to  door ;  all  the  tables  were  occupied ;  there  was 
already  a  large  number  of  drunken  persons,  and  in  a 
small  room  some  one  was  playing  the  accordion,  and  two 
were  dancing.  Out  of  respect  for  me  Ivan  Fedotych 
ordered  the  dance  stopped,  and  sat  down  with  me  at  an 
unoccupied  table.  I  told  him  that,  since  he  knew  his 
lodgers,  he  might  be  able  to  point  out  to  me  those  who 
were  most  in  need,  as  I  had  been  ordered  to  distribute 
a  small  sum  of  money.  Good-natured  Ivan  Fedotych 
(he  died  a  year  later),  though  busy  attending  to  his  trade, 
stayed  away  from  it  for  awhile,  in  order  to  aid  me.     He 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  61 

fell  to  inusiug,  and  was  apparently  perplexed.  An  elderly 
waiter  had  heard  us  speak,  and  took  part  in  the  consulta- 
tion. 

They  began  to  pass  in  review  a  number  of  persons, 
some  of  whom  I  knew  myself,  and  we  could  not  come  to 
an  understanding. 

"  Paramonovna,"  the  waiter  proposed. 

"  Yes,  that  is  so.  Goes  often  without  food.  Well,  she 
does  have  sprees." 

"  What  of  it  ?     Still." 

"  Well,  Spiriddn  Ivanovich,  —  has  children.    That's  it." 

But  Ivan  Fedotych  had  some  objection  to  Spiriddn 
Ivanovich. 

"  Akulina  ?  She  receives  money.  Well,  how  about 
the  blind  man?" 

To  this  one  I  myself  objected.  I  had  just  seen  him. 
He  was  an  old  man  of  eighty  years  of  age  and  blind, 
without  kith  or  kin.  One  would  imagine  that  there  could 
not  be  a  harder  lot  than  his ;  but  I  had  seen  him  just 
awhile  ago :  he  was  lying  on  a  high  feather  bed,  drunk, 
and,  as  he  did  not  see  me,  discharged  the  vilest  of 
words  in  a  terrible  bass  against  his  comparatively  young 
mate. 

Then  they  mentioned  an  armless  boy  and  his  mother. 
I  saw  that  Ivan  Fedotych  was  embarrassed,  on  account  of 
his  honesty,  for  he  knew  that,  no  matter  what  should 
be  given,  it  would  all  come  to  him  in  his  restaurant.  But 
I  had  to  get  rid  of  the  thirty-two  roubles,  and  so  I  in- 
sisted, and,  by  making  compromises,  we  managed  to  dis- 
tribute the  money.  Those  who  received  it  were  generally 
well  dressed,  and  it  was  not  necessary  to  go  far  for  them, 
for  they  were  all  there,  in  the  restaurant.  The  armless 
boy  came  in  extensible  boots,  a  red  shirt,  and  a  vest. 

Thus  ended  my  whole  philanthropic  activity,  and  I  went 
back  to  the  village,  irritated  at  others,  as  is  nearly  always 
the  case  when  I  have  committed  some  foolish  and  bad 


62  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

act.  My  pliilanthropy  was  reduced  to  zero  and  came  to 
a  complete  stop,  but  the  train  of  thought  aud  of  feehogs 
which  it  had  evoked  in  me  did  not  come  to  a  stop :  my 
inner  work  proceeded  with  redoubled  force. 


XII. 

What,  then,  had  happened  ? 

I  had  lived  in  the  country,  and  there  had  had  relations 
with  the  village  poor.  Not  out  of  humility,  which  is 
worse  than  pride,  but  in  order  to  tell  the  truth,  which 
is  necessary  for  the  comprehension  of  the  whole  train  of 
my  thought  and  feelings,  I  will  say  that  in  the  country 
I  had  done  very  little  for  the  poor;  but  the  demands 
made  on  me  were  so  modest,  that  even  this  little  was 
useful  to  men  and  created  around  me  an  atmosphere  of 
love  and  union  with  the  people,  in  which  it  was  possible 
for  me  to  calm  the  gnawing  feeling  of  the  consciousness 
of  the  illegahty  of  my  hfe.  When  I  moved  to  the  city  I 
expected  to  hve  in  the  same  manner.  But  here  I  came 
across  want  of  an  entirely  different  description. 

The  city  want  was  less  genuine,  and  more  exacting, 
and  more  cruel  than  the  village  want.  Above  all,  there 
was  so  much  of  it  in  one  place  that  it  produced  a  terrible 
impression  on  me.  The  impression  which  I  received  in 
Lyapinski  House  in  the  first  moment  made  me  feel  the 
monstrousness  of  my  life.  This  sentiment  was  sincere 
and  very  strong.  But,  in  spite  of  its  sincerity  and 
strength,  I  was  at  first  so  weak  as  to  get  frightened  at 
the  transformation  of  my  life,  to  which  this  sentiment 
called  me,  and  was  so  ready  for  compromises,  I  believed 
that  which  everybody  was  telKng  me,  and  which  every- 
body has  been  saying  since  the  creation  of  the  world, 
namely,  that  there  was  nothing  bad  in  wealth  and  luxury  ; 
that  it  was  given  by  God ;  that  it  was  possible  to  aid  the 

63 


64  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

ueedy  and  yet  continue  to  live  in  wealth.  I  believed  it 
and  wanted  to  act  accordingly. 

I  wrote  an  article  in  which  I  appealed  to  all  the  rich 
people  to  offer  their  assistance.  All  the  rich  people 
acknowledged  themselves  morally  obliged  to  agree  with 
me,  but  evidently  either  did  not  wish,  or  were  unable  to 
do  or  give  anything  for  the  poor.  I  began  to  visit  the 
poor,  and  I  beheld  there  what  I  had  never  expected  to  see. 
On  the  one  hand,  I  saw  in  these  dens,  as  I  called  them, 
people  whom  it  was  impossible  tor  me  to  assist,  because 
they  were  labouring  people,  who  were  used  to  work  and  to 
privations,  and  so  stood  incomparably  higher  than  I  in  life  ; 
on  the  other  hand,  I  saw  unfortunates  whom  I  could  not 
assist,  because  they  were  the  same  kind  of  men  that  I 
myself  am.  The  majority  of  the  unfortunates  whom 
I  saw  were  unfortunate  only  because  they  had  lost  the 
ability,  the  desire,  and  the  habit  of  earning  their  bread, 
that  is,  their  misfortune  consisted  in  being  precisely  such 
as  I  am. 

Of  unfortunates  who  could  be  aided  at  once,  —  sick, 
freezing,  hungry  people,  —  I  did  not  find  a  single  person 
but  starving  Agafya.  I  convinced  myself  that,  with  my 
aloofness  from  the  lives  of  the  people  whom  I  wished  to 
aid,  it  wae  almost  impossible  for  me  to  find  such  unfortunate 
people,  because  every  true  need  was  always  met  by  those 
very  people  among  whom  these  unfortunates  lived  ;  and, 
above  all  else,  I  was  convinced  that  I  was  not  able  with 
money  to  change  that  unfortunate  life  which  these  people 
led.  I  was  convinced  of  all  that,  but  from  a  false  shame 
I  did  not  throw  up  my  undertaking  and,  deceiving  my- 
self with  my  own  virtue,  I  continued  the  matter  for  quite 
awhile,  until  it  reduced  itself  to  zero,  until  I  with  great 
difficulty,  and  with  the  aid  of  Ivan  Fedotych,  in  the 
restaurant  of  Rzhanov  House,  got  rid  of  the  thirty-seven 
roubles  which  I  did  not  consider  my  own. 

Of  course  I  might  have  continued  this  business  and 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  65 

made  of  it  a  semblance  of  philanthropy ;  I  might  have 
pushed  the  people  who  had  promised  me  the  money  to 
give  it  to  me ;  might  have  collected  more ;  might  have 
distributed  the  money  and  consoled  myself  with  my 
virtue ;  but  I  saw,  on  the  one  hand,  that  we  rich  people 
did  not  wish  and  were  unable  to  apportion  to  the  poor  a 
part  of  our  abundance  (we  have  so  many  needs  of  our 
own),  and  that  there  was  no  one  to  give  the  money  to, 
if  we  indeed  wished  to  do  good  to  people,  and  not  merely 
to  distribute  money  at  haphazard,  as  I  had  done  in  the 
Rzhanov  restaurant.  So  I  abandoned  the  whole  business, 
and  with  despair  in  my  heart  returned  to  the  country. 

In  the  country  I  wanted  to  write  an  article  about 
everything  I  had  experienced,  and  to  tell  why  my  under- 
taking had  been  a  failure.  I  wanted  also  to  justify 
myself  in  regard  to  the  rebukes  which  were  heaped  upon 
me  on  account  of  my  article  on  the  census ;  I  wanted  to 
arraign  society  for  its  indifference  and  to  point  out  the 
causes  which  bred  this  urban  poverty,  and  the  necessity 
of  counteracting  it  and  the  means  which  I  saw  must  be 
adopted  to  do  so. 

I  immediately  began  writing  my  article,  and  it  seemed 
to  me  that  I  should  say  some  important  things  in  it. 
But,  no  matter  how  much  I  struggled  with  it,  no  matter 
how  abundant  the  material  was,  the  excitement,  under 
the  influeuce  of  which  I  wrote,  and  because  I  had  not  yet 
sufficiently  emerged  from  the  impression  produced  by  it 
to  be  able  to  treat  it  in  a  direct  manner,  and,  above  all, 
because  I  did  not  yet  simply  and  clearly  recognize  the 
cause  of  it  all,  a  very  simple  cause,  w^hich  had  its  root 
in  me,  —  I  was  unable  to  make  headway  with  the  article 
and  so  did  not  finish  it  until  the  present  year. 

In  the  moral  sphere  there  takes  place  a  very  remark- 
able, but  little  observed  phenomenon. 

If  I  tell  a  man,  who  does  not  know  it,  anything  I  know 
from   geology,  astronomy,  history,  physics,  mathematics. 


66  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

he  will  acquire  some  new  information  and  will  never  say, 
"  What  is  there  about  it  that  is  new  ?  Everybody  knows 
that,  and  I  have  known  it  for  quite  awhile ; "  but  impart 
to  a  man  the  highest  moral  truth,  which  is  expressed  in 
the  clearest,  most  compact  manner,  as  it  has  never  been 
expressed  before,  and  the  average  man,  especially  if  he  is 
not  interested  in  these  moral  questions,  or,  more  espe- 
cially, if  the  moral  truth  which  you  utter  strokes  his  fur 
the  wrong  way,  will  be  certain  to  say,  "  Who  does  not 
know  this  ?  This  is  an  old  story  and  has  been  said  long 
ago."  It  actually  seems  to  him  that  it  was  said  long  ago 
and  in  precisely  this  form.  Only  those  who  value  and 
esteem  the  moral  truths  know  how  precious  and  valuable 
they  are  and  by  what  long  labour  one  obtains  the  simpli- 
fication and  elucidation  of  a  moral  truth,  —  its  transition 
from  a  hazy,  indefinitely  conceived  supposition  and  wish, 
from  indefinite,  incoherent  expressions,  to  a  firm  and  defi- 
nite expression,  which  inevitably  demands  corresponding 
actions.  We  are  all  of  us  accustomed  to  think  that  moral 
teaching  is  a  very  base  and  tiresome  thing,  in  which  there 
can  be  nothing  new  or  interesting,  whereas  the  whole  of 
human  life,  with  all  its  complex  and  varied  activities, 
which  seem  to  be  independent  of  morahty,  in  the  fields 
of  politics,  science,  art,  has  no  other  purpose  than  a 
greater  and  ever  greater  elucidation,  confirmation,  simpli- 
fication, and  accessibility  of  moral  truths. 

I  remember  one  day  I  walked  down  a  street  in  Mos- 
cow, and  saw  a  man  coming  out  of  a  shop  and  carefully 
scanning  the  stones  of  the  sidewalk ;  then  he  selected 
one  of  them,  sat  down  on  it,  and  began  (as  I  thought) 
to  chip  it  off  or  rub  it  with  the  greatest  tension  and 
effort. 

"  What  is  he  doing  to  the  sidewalk  ? "  I  thought. 
When  I  walked  up  close  to  him,  I  saw  what  the  man 
was  doing ;  he  was  a  fellow  from  a  butcher  shop ;  he  was 
whetting   his  knife   against   the  stones  of  the  sidewalk. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  67 

He  had  not  been  thinking  of  the  stones  at  all  when  he 
looked  at  them,  and  still  less  was  he  thinking  of  them 
while  doing  his  work,  —  he  was  simply  whetting  his 
knife.  He  had  to  sharpen  his  knife  to  cut  meat  with  it ; 
and  there  I  thought  that  he  was  busy  doing  something  to 
the  stones. 

Even  so  it  only  seems  that  humanity  is  busy  with 
commerce,  treaties,  wars,  sciences,  arts ;  but  there  is  only 
one  work  which  is  of  importance  to  humanity,  and  which 
it  does :  it  is  explaining  to  itself  the  moral  laws  by 
which  it  lives.  The  moral  laws  have  existed  before,  and 
humanity  only  elucidates  them  to  itself,  and  this  elucida- 
tion seems  unimportant  and  insignificant  to  him  who  does 
not  need  the  moral  law,  who  does  not  want  to  live  by  it. 
But  this  elucidation  of  the  moral  law  is  not  only  the 
chief,  but  also  the  only  work  of  the  whole  of  humanity. 
This  elucidation  is  as  unnoticeable  as  the  distinction 
between  a  dull  and  a  sharp  knife.  The  knife  is  a  knife, 
and  for  him  who  does  not  have  to  cut  with  this  knife  the 
distinction  between  a  dull  and  a  sharp  knife  is  not  notice- 
able. But  for  him  who  has  comprehended  that  his  whole 
life  depends  on  a  more  or  less  dull  or  sharp  knife,  every 
whetting  of  it  is  of  importance,  and  he  knows  that  there 
is  no  end  to  this  sharpening,  and  that  a  knife  is  a  knife 
only  when  it  is  sharp,  when  it  cuts  what  it  is  necessary 
to  cut. 

This  happened  with  me  when  I  began  to  write  the 
article.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  knew  everything,  com- 
prehended everything  in  respect  to  those  questions  which 
the  impression  of  Lyapinski  House  and  of  the  census  had 
evoked  in  me ;  but  when  I  attempted  to  make  them  clear 
to  myself  and  to  expound  them,  it  turned  out  that  the 
knife  would  not  cut,  that  it  was  necessary  to  sharpen  it. 
Only  now,  after  three  years,  did  I  feel  that  my  knife  was 
sufficiently  sharpened  to  let  me  cut  what  I  wanted.  I 
had  learned  little  that  was  new.     All  my  thoughts  are 


68  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

the  same,  but  they  were  duller,  dispersed  easily,  and  did 
not  harmonize  ;  there  was  no  sting  in  them  ;  they  did  not 
reduce  themselves  to  the  simplest  and  clearest  resolve,  as 
they  do  now. 


XIII. 

I  REMEMBER  how  during  the  whole  time  of  my  unsuc- 
cessful experiment  in  aiding  the  unfortunate  city  dwellers 
I  felt  like  a  man  who  wants  to  pull  another  out  of 
the  mire,  while  he  himself  is  standing  on  boggy  ground. 
Every  effort  of  mine  made  me  feel  the  insecurity  of  the 
soil  on  which  I  was  standing.  I  felt  that  I  was  myself 
in  the  bog ;  but  that  consciousness  did  not  cause  me  then 
to  look  more  closely  underneath  me,  in  order  that  1 
might  find  out  what  I  was  standing  on ;  I  kept  all  the 
time  lookiug  for  an  external  means  for  succouring  the 
evil  which  was  outside  of  me. 

I  then  felt  that  my  life  was  bad  and  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  live  so.  But  from  the  fact  that  my  hfe  was 
bad  and  that  it  w^as  impossible  to  live  so,  I  did  not  de- 
duce the  very  simple  and  clear  conclusion  that  it  was 
necessary  to  improve  my  own  life  and  live  better,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  drew  the  strange  conclusion  that  it  was 
necessary  to  correct  the  lives  of  others  in  order  that  I 
might  be  able  to  live  better,  —  and  so  I  began  to  correct 
the  lives  of  others.  I  lived  in  the  city  and  wanted  to 
improve  the  lives  of  those  who  lived  in  the  city,  but  I 
soon  convinced  myself  that  I  could  not  do  it  at  all,  and 
began  to  think  about  the  peculiarities  of  city  life  and  city 
poverty. 

"  What  is  this  city  life  and  this  city  poverty  ?  Why 
could  I  not,  while  living  in  the  city,  help  the  city  poor  ? " 
I  asked  myself.  And  I  answered  myself  that  I  was  un- 
able to  do  anything  for  them,  in  the  first  place,  because 
there  were  too  many  of  them  in  one  spot ;  in  the  second 

69 


70  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

place,  because  all  these  poor  were  quite  different  from  the 
village  poor.  Why  were  there  so  many  of  them  here,  and 
in  what  did  they  differ  from  the  village  poor  ?  There 
was  one  answer  to  both  these  questions.  There  were 
many  of  them  here,  because  all  those  who  have  nothing 
to  live  on  in  the  country  gather  here  around  the  rich,  and 
their  peculiarity  consists  in  this,  that  they  are  all  people 
who  have  left  the  country  in  order  to  find  a  living  in  the 
city  (if  there  are  city  poor  who  are  born  here,  and  whose 
fathers  and  grandfathers  were  born  here,  these  fathers  and 
grandfathers  had  come  to  the  city  to  make  a  living). 

What  is  meant  by  the  expression  "  to  make  a  living  in  the 
city  "  ?  In  the  words  "  to  make  a  hving  in  the  city  "  there 
is  something  strange,  something  resembling  a  jest,  when 
you  come  to  think  of  it.  What  ?  Away  from  the  coun- 
try, that  is,  away  from  the  places  where  there  are  forests, 
and  fields,  and  grain,  and  cattle,  —  where  the  whole 
wealth  of  the  land  is,  —  do  these  people  go  to  make  a  liv- 
ing in  a  place  where  there  are  no  trees,  nor  grass,  nor  even 
soil,  but  only  stones  and  dust  ?  What,  then,  is  meant  by 
the  words  "  to  make  a  living  in  the  city,"  which  are  so 
constantly  employed  by  those  who  make  a  living  and 
by  those  who  feed  them,  as  something  quite  clear  and 
comprehensible  ? 

I  remember  all  the  hundreds  and  thousands  of  city 
people,  —  both  those  who  live  well  and  those  who  are  in 
need,  —  with  whom  I  spoke  about  their  coming  thither, 
and  all  without  exception  told  me  that  they  came  here 
from  the  country  to  make  a  Hving ;  that  Moscow  neither 
sows  nor  reaps,  but  has  wealth  in  heaps ;  that  there  was 
plenty  of  everything  in  Moscow  and  that,  therefore,  they 
could  only  in  Moscow  gain  the  money  which  they  needed 
in  the  country  for  bread,  for  their  home,  for  a  horse,  for 
objects  of  prime  importance.  But  the  source  of  all  wealth 
is  in  the  country,  —  only  there  is  the  true  wealth  to  be 
found,  —  bread,  and  the  forest,  and  horses,  and  everything 


Visiting  their  son 


WHAT    SUALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  71 

else.  Why,  then,  go  to  the  city  in  order  to  obtain  what 
there  is  in  the  country  ?  And  why,  above  all  else,  carry 
from  the  country  to  the  city  what  the  villagers  need, — 
flour,  oats,  horses,  cattle  ? 

I  have  spoken  hundreds  of  times  about  it  with  peasants 
living  in  the  city,  and  it  became  clear  to  me,  from  my 
conversations  with  them  and  from  my  observations,  that 
the  crowding  of  the  country  population  in  the  cities  was 
partly  necessary,  because  they  cannot  otherwise  earn  a 
livehhood,  and  partly  voluntary,  and  that  the  temptations 
of  the  city  attract  them  thither.  It  is  true  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  peasant  is  such  that,  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
demands  which  are  made  on  him  in  the  village,  he  cannot 
get  along  in  any  other  way  than  by  selling  the  grain  and 
the  cattle  which,  he  knows,  he  will  need,  and  so  he  is 
compelled  against  his  will  to  go  to  the  city  in  order 
to  redeem  his  grain.  But  it  is  also  true  that  the  compara- 
tively easier  earnings  and  the  luxury  of  life  in  the  city 
attract  him  thither,  and  that,  under  the  guise  of  making 
a  living  in  the  city,  he  goes  there,  in  order  to  work  less 
laboriously  and  eat  better,  to  drink  tea  three  times  a  day, 
to  play  the  dandy,  and  even  to  get  drunk  and  live  a 
riotous  life. 

The  cause  of  both  is  one  and  the  same :  the  passing  of 
the  wealth  of  the  producers  into  the  hands  of  the  non- 
producers  and  the  accumulation  of  the  wealth  in  the  cities. 
Indeed,  the  autumn  comes,  and  all  the  wealth  is  hoarded 
in  the  village ;  immediately  there  present  themselves  the 
demands  of  taxation,  of  military  service,  of  rentals ; 
immediately  there  are  put  forth  the  temptations  of  vodka, 
weddings,  holidays,  petty  traders,  who  travel  from  village 
to  village,  and  of  many  other  things  ;  and  in  one  way  or 
another  all  this  wealth  in  the  most  varied  forms  —  sheep, 
calves,  cows,  horses,  pigs,  chickens,  eggs,  butter,  hemp, 
flax,  rye,  oats,  buckwheat,  peas,  hemp  and  flax  seeds  — 
passes  into  the  hands  of  strangers  and  is  transferred  to  the 


72  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEi>[  ? 

cities,  and  from  the  cities  to  the  capitals.  The  villager 
is  compelled  to  give  it  all  up  in  order  to  satisfy  the  demands 
made  on  him  and  the  temptations  that  entice  him,  and, 
having  given  up  all  his  wealth,  he  is  left  in  arrears ;  he 
is  compelled  to  go  to  where  his  wealth  has  been  taken, 
and  there  he  partly  tries  to  recoup  the  money  which  he 
needs  for  his  first  wants  iu  the  country,  and  partly,  bein^ 
carried  away  by  the  temptations  of  the  city,  enjoys,  with 
others,  the  accumulated  wealth. 

Everywhere,  in  the  whole  of  Russia,  and,  I  think,  not 
only  in  Russia,  but  in  the  whole  world  as  well,  the  same 
thing  takes  place.  The  wealth  of  the  country  population 
passes  into  the  hands  of  traders,  landowners,  officials, 
manufacturers,  and  the  men  who  have  acquired  this  wealth 
want  to  enjoy  it ;  but  it  is  only  in  the  cities  that  they  can 
fully  enjoy  it.  In  the  country  it  is,  in  the  first  place, 
impossible,  on  account  of  the  thinness  of  the  population, 
to  find  a  gratification  for  all  the  wants  of  rich  people : 
they  miss  all  kinds  of  shops,  banks,  restaurants,  the- 
atres, and  all  kinds  of  social  amusements.  In  the  second 
place,  one  of  the  chief  enjoyments  furnished  by  wealth  — 
vanity,  the  desire  to  startle  and  outdo  others  —  can  again, 
on  account  of  the  thinness  of  the  population,  be  with 
difficulty  gratified  in  the  country.  In  the  country  there 
are  no  connoisseurs  of  luxury,  and  there  is  nobody  to 
startle.  No  matter  what  adornments  of  the  house, 
what  pictures,  bronzes,  carriages,  and  toilets  the  country 
dweller  may  provide  himself  with,  there  is  no  one  to  look 
at  them  and  envy  him,  for  the  peasants  have  no  under- 
standing about  this  whole  matter.  In  the  third  place, 
luxury  is  even  disagreeable  and  dangerous  in  the  country 
for  a  man  who  has  a  conscience  and  fear.  It  is  awkward 
and  troublesome  to  take  milk  baths  in  the  country  and  to 
feed  puppies  on  milk,  when  the  children  near  by  have  none  ; 
it  is  awkward  and  troublesome  to  build  pavilions  and  set 
out  gardens  among  people  who  live  in  cabins  which  are 


WHAT   SHALL    WE   DO    THEN?  73 

surrounded  by  manure,  and  cannot  be  heated  for  want  of 
wood.  In  the  village  there  is  no  one  to  keep  in  restraint 
the  stupid  peasants  who  in  their  ignorance  may  destroy 
all  this. 

And  so  the  rich  gather  in  one  place  and  settle  near 
other  rich  people  with  similar  wants  in  the  cities,  where 
the  gratification  of  all  kinds  of  luxurious  tastes  is  cau- 
tiously guarded  by  a  numerous  police  force.  The  funda- 
mental city  dwellers  are  the  officials  of  the  country  ;  about 
them  are  grouped  all  kinds  of  professionals  and  indus- 
trialists, and  these  are  joiued  by  the  rich.  Here  a  rich 
man  need  ouly  have  a  wish,  and  it  is  immediately  ful- 
filled. Here  it  is  pleasanter  for  a  rich  man  to  hve,  for 
this  reason  also,  that  here  he  is  able  to  satisfy  his  vanity, 
for  he  can  vie  in  his  luxury  with  others,  and  can  startle 
and  overshadow  people.  Above  all  else,  a  rich  man  feels 
happier  in  the  city  for  this  reason  also,  that  before  he  had 
fears  on  account  of  his  luxury  in  the  country,  but  now,  on 
the  contrary,  he  feels  out  of  place  if  he  does  not  live 
as  luxuriously  as  all  his  friends  around  him.  What 
in  the  country  seemed  terrible  and  awkward  to  him,  here 
seems  to  be  in  place. 

The  rich  congregate  in  the  city,  and  here,  under  the 
protection  of  the  authorities,  use  up  everything  which  is 
brought  hither  from  the  country.  The  villager  is  partly 
obhged  to  go  where  the  unceasing  holiday  of  the  rich 
is  celebrated,  and  where  that  which  is  taken  from  him  is 
used  up,  in  order  that  he  may  feed  on  the  crumbs  which 
fall  from  the  tables  of  the  rich  ;  and  partly,  as  he  looks 
at  the  free  and  easy,  elegant,  well-guarded  life  of  the  rich, 
which  is  approved  of  by  everybody,  he  himself  wants  to 
arrange  his  life  in  such  a  way  as  to  work  least  and  enjoy 
most  the  labours  of  others. 

And  so  he,  too,  is  drawn  to  the  city,  where  he  hangs  on 
to  the  rich,  trying  in  every  manner  possible  to  get  away 
from  them  what  he  needs,   and  submitting  to   all  those 


74  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

conditions  in  which  the  rich  have  placed  him.  He  con- 
tributes to  the  gratification  of  all  their  lusts  ;  he  or  she 
serves  the  rich  man  in  the  bath-house,  and  in  the  restau- 
rant, and  as  a  driver,  and  as  a  prostitute,  and  makes  car- 
riages for  him,  and  toys,  and  fashion  articles,  and  by- 
degrees  learns  of  the  rich  man  to  live  like  him,  not 
by  labour,  but  by  all  kinds  of  tricks,  cheating  others 
of  their  hoarded  wealth,  —  and  he  becomes  corrupted  and 
perishes.  It  is  this  population,  which  is  corrupted  by 
the  city  wealth,  that  forms  the  city  poverty,  which  I  in- 
tended to  assist,  but  could  not. 

Indeed,  it  is  enough  for  one  to  stop  and  think  of  the 
condition  of  these  country  dwellers,  who,  for  the  purpose 
of  earning  money  for  bread  and  for  the  taxes,  come  to  the 
city  where  they  see  all  about  them  thousands  slung 
thoughtlessly  away  and  hundreds  earned  in  a  very  easy 
manner,  while  they  themselves  earn  kopeks  by  the  hard- 
est labour  possible,  —  in  order  that  one  may  marvel  why 
there  are  still  left  working  people,  and  why  they  do  not 
all  of  them  take  to  a  much  easier  way  of  making  money, 
by  means  of  commerce,  peddling,  begging,  debauch,  ras- 
cality, and  even  robbery. 

We,  indeed,  the  participants  in  thfe  unceasing  orgy 
which  takes  place  in  the  cities,  we  are  able  to  get  used  to 
our  life,  so  that  it  seems  quite  natural  for  us  to  live  alone 
in  five  enormous  rooms,  which-  are  heated  with  a  quantity 
of  wood  sufficient  to  cook  the  food  of  twenty  families,  and 
to  warm  them,  to  travel  half  a  verst  with  two  trotters 
and  two  servants,  to  cover  the  parquetry  floor  with  rugs, 
and  to  spend  five  and  ten  thousand  for  a  ball,  and 
twenty-five  for  a  Christmas  tree,  and  so  forth.  But  a 
man  who  needs  ten  roubles  for  bread  for  his  family, 
or  from  whom  they  take  the  last  sheep  for  the  seven 
roubles  of  his  taxes,  and  who  cannot  earn  these  seven 
roubles  by  hard  labour  even,  cannot  get  used  to  it. 

We    imagine   that    all    this    appears    natural   to   poor 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  75 

people ;  there  even  are  naive  people  who  say  seriously 
that  the  poor  are  very  thankful  to  us  for  supporting  them 
through  our  luxury.  But  the  poor  are  not  deprived 
of  human  intelligence  because  they  are  poor,  and  they 
judge  precisely  as  we  do.  Even  as  we,  on  hearing  that 
such  and  such  a  person  has  lost  in  cards,  or  wasted  ten 
or  twenty  thousand,  think  at  first  thought  what  a  foolish 
and  worthless  man  he  is  to  have  uselessly  squandered 
such  a  sum,  and  how  we  might  have  made  excellent  use 
of  it  for  our  building,  which  we  have  been  needing  for 
quite  awhile,  or  for  the  improvement  of  the  estate,  and 
so  forth,  —  so  the  poor  judge,  when  they  see  the  wealth 
recklessly  thrown  about ;  and  they  are  the  more  per- 
sistent in  their  reflections  since  they  do  not  need  the 
money  for  any  fancies,  but  for  the  gratification  of  their 
daily  needs,  of  which  they  are  deprived.  We  are  very 
much  in  error  if  we  think  that  the  poor  can  judge  thus 
and  yet  look  with  indifference  on  the  luxury  which  sur- 
rounds them. 

They  have  never  acknowledged  the  fact  that  it  is  right 
for  one  set  of  people  to  be  celebrating  all  the  time,  while 
others  are  all  the  time  fasting  and  working ;  at  first  they 
are  surprised  at  it  and  feel  offended,  but  later  they  ex- 
amine it  more  closely  and,  seeing  that  this  order  of  things 
is  considered  legitimate,  they  try  to  free  themselves  from 
labour,  and  to  take  part  in  the  holiday.  Some  succeed  in 
it,  and  they  become  just  such  eternal  celebrators ;  others 
slowly  make  their  way  toward  this  state  ;  others  give  way 
before  reaching  their  goal  and,  having  lost  the  habit  of 
working,  fill  the  resorts  of  prostitution  and  the  doss- 
houses. 

Two  years  ago  we  took  a  peasant  lad  from  the  country 
to  work  in  the  buffet-room.  He  had  a  disagreement  with 
the  lackey,  and  was  discharged  ;  he  entered  the  service  of 
a  merchant,  where  he  managed  to  please  his  master,  and 
now  he  sports  a  vest  and  a  chain  and  foppish  boots.    In  his 


76  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

place  we  engaged  another  peasant,  a  married  man  ;  he  went 
on  a  spree  and  lost  his  money.  We  took  a  third  man  : 
he,  too,  took  to  drinking  and,  having  spent  every  kopek, 
for  a  long  time  suffered  misery  in  a  doss-house.  Our  old 
cook  got  drunk  in  the  city,  and  fell  sick.  Last  year  our 
lackey,  who  used  to  drink  without  let-up,  but  who  for 
live  years  had  kept  himself  straight  in  the  country,  with- 
out as  much  as  touching  liquor,  went  on  a  spree,  and 
ruined  his  whole  life.  A  young  lad  from  our  village  is  a 
servant  of  my  brother's  buffet-room.  His  grandfather, 
a  l)lind  old  man,  came  to  me,  during  my  stay  in  the 
country,  and  asked  me  to  influence  his  grandchild  to  send 
him  ten  roubles  for  the  taxes,  for  otherwise  he  would 
have  to  sell  his  cow. 

"  He  keeps  saying  that  he  has  to  dress  decently ;  well, 
let  him  get  a  pair  of  boots,  and  let  there  be  an  end  of  it. 
Or  is  he  going  to  provide  himself  with  a  watch,  too?" 
said  the  old  man,  meaning  to  express  as  senseless  a  propo- 
sition as  possible  by  it.  The  proposition  was,  indeed, 
senseless,  if  we  know  that  the  old  man  had  prepared  his 
food  without  butter  during  the  whole  of  Lent,  and  that 
the  wood  which  he  had  cut  was  being  ruined,  because  he 
lacked  one  rouble  and  twenty  kopeks  to  pay  for  it 
in  full ;  but  it  turned  out  that  the  senseless  jest  of  the 
old  man  was  a  reality.  The  lad  came  to  me  in  an  over- 
coat of  fine  black  cloth  and  in  boots  for  which  he  had 
paid  eight  roubles.  The  other  day  he  took  ten  roubles 
from  my  brother  and  spent  them  all  on  boots.  My  chil- 
dren, who  had  known  the  lad  since  childhood,  informed 
me  that  he  regarded  it  indeed  as  necessary  to  provide 
himself  with  a  watch.  He  is  a  very  good  lad,  but  he 
thinks  that  they  will  laugh  at  him  so  long  as  he  does  not 
procure  a  watch.     And  he  must  have  the  watch. 

This  year  our  chambermaid,  a  girl  of  eighteen  years  of 
age,  entered  into  a  liaison  with  the  coachman.  She  was 
discharged.     An  old  nurse,  with  whom  I  spoke  of  this 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  77 

unfortunate  girl,  reminded  me  of  another  girl,  whom  I 
had  forgotten.  She,  too,  had  ten  years  before  entered 
into  a  liaison  with  a  coachman  of  ours ;  slie,  too,  had  been 
discharged,  and  ended  up  in  a  house  of  prostitution,  dying, 
before  she  had  reached  the  age  of  twenty,  in  a  hospital 
from  the  effect  of  syphilis.  We  need  but  look  around  us 
in  order  to  get  frightened  at  the  infection  which,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  factories  and  manufacturing  plants  that 
also  serve  our  luxury,  we  by  our  luxurious  life  directly 
disseminate  among  those  people  whom  we  wish  to  help. 

And  so,  as  I  grasped  the  peculiarity  of  the  city  poverty, 
to  which  I  was  unable  to  offer  any  assistance,  I  saw  that 
its  first  cause  was  this,  that  I  took  everything  necessary 
away  from  the  village  dwellers  and  transferred  it  all  to 
the  city.  The  second  cause  was  this,  that  here,  in  the  city, 
where  I  made  use  of  what  I  had  collected  in  the  country, 
I  with  my  reckless  luxury  tempted  and  corrupted  those 
country  dwellers  who  came  here  in  my  track,  in  order 
somehow  to  get  back  what  was  taken  from  them  in  the 
village. 


XIV. 

I  CAME  to  the  same  conclusion  from  an  entirely  differ- 
ent side.  As  I  recalled  all  my  relations  with  the  city 
paupers  at  this  time,  I  saw  that  one  of  the  causes  which 
kept  me  from  aiding  the  city  poor  was  this,  that  the  poor 
were  insincere  and  untruthful  to  me.  They  all  looked 
upon  me,  not  as  a  man,  but  as  a  means.  I  was  not  able 
to  get  in  closer  touch  with  them  and,  perhaps,  I  did  not 
know  how  to ;  but  without  truthfulness  aid  was  impos- 
sible. How  could  a  man  be  aided  if  he  did  not  tell  every- 
thing about  his  situation  ?  At  first  I  reproached  them 
for  it  (it  is  so  natural  to  reproach  others),  but  one  word 
of  a  remarkable  man,  namely,  of  Syutaev,  who  was  stay- 
ing at  my  house  at  that  time,  made  the  whole  matter 
clear  to  me  and  showed  wherein  lay  the  cause  of  my 
failure. 

I  remember  that  even  then  the  word  uttered  by  Syutaev 
struck  me  forcibly ;  but  only  much  later  did  I  grasp  its 
whole  meaning.  It  was  during  the  full  heat  of  my  self- 
deception.  I  was  sitting  at  my  sister's,  where  Syutaev 
was  also.  My  sister  asked  me  about  my  undertaking. 
I  told  her  about  it  and,  as  is  always  the  case  when  a  man 
does  not  believe  in  his  own  undertaking,  I  told  her  with 
much  fervour,  enthusiasm,  and  eloquence  about  what  I 
was  doing,  and  what  might  come  of  it ;  I  told  her  how 
we  were  going  to  look  after  orphans  and  old  people ; 
how  we  would  send  out  of  town  such  of  the  country 
dwellers  as  had  fallen  into  straits  in  Moscow ;  how  we 
would  make  it  easy  for  the  corrupt  to  mend  their  ways ; 

78 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  79 

how,  if  the  matter  would  go  at  all,  there  would  not  be  a 
man  in  Moscow  who  would  be  unable  to  get  assistance. 

My  sister  sympathized  with  me,  and  we  went  on  talk- 
ing. During  the  conversation  I  cast  glances  at  Syutaev. 
As  I  knew  his  Christian  life  and  the  significance  which 
is  ascribed  to  charity,  I  expected  him  to  sympathize  with 
me,  and  I  spoke  in  such  a  way  that  he  might  understand 
me ;  I  talked  to  my  sister,  but  my  words  were  directed  at 
him.  He  sat  motionless  in  his  black-tanned  sheepskin 
coat,  which,  like  all  peasants,  he  wore  outside  and  in  the 
house,  and  did  not  seem  to  be  hstening  to  us,  but  only 
thinking.  His  httle  eyes  were  not  glistening,  but  seemed 
to  be  turned  inward.  Having  talked  quite  awhile,  I 
turned  to  him  with  the  question  what  he  thought 
about  it. 

"  It's  all  nonsense,"  he  said. 

"  Why  ? " 

"  Your  whole  society  is  foolish,  and  no  good  will  come 
from  it,"  he  repeated,  with  conviction. 

"Why  not?  Why  is  it  foolish  to  help  thousands,  or 
say  hundreds,  of  unfortunates  ?  Is  it  bad  according  to 
the  Gospel  to  clothe  the  naked  and  feed  the  hungry  ? " 

"I  know,  I  know,  but  you  are  not  doing  the  right  thing. 
Do  you  suppose  you  can  do  anything  this  way  ?  You  are 
walking,  and  a  man  asks  you  for  twenty  kopeks.  You 
give  them  to  him.  Is  that  an  alms  ?  Give  him  a  spirit- 
ual alms,  instruct  him  ;  but  what  did  you  give  him  ?  Oh, 
iust  something  to  get  rid  of  him." 

"No,  you  do  not  understand  me  right.  We  want  to 
find  out  w^here  there  is  want,  and  then  help  with  money 
and  with  deeds,  —  and  to  find  work  for  them." 

"  You  will  do  nothing  for  the  people  in  this  manner." 

"  Well,  shall  they  starve  and  freeze  to  death  ? " 

"  Why  should  they  ?     Are  there  many  of  them  here  ? " 

"  Are  there  many  ? "  I  said,  thinking  that  he  was  look- 
ing so  hghtly  at  the  matter  because  he  did  not  know  what 


so  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

an  immense  number  there  was  of  these  people.  "  Do  you 
know,"  I  said,  "  that  there  are  some  twenty  thousand  of 
these  starving  and  freezing  people  in  Moscow  ?  And 
then,  in  St.  Petersburg  and  other  cities." 

He  smiled. 

"  Twenty  thousand !  and  how  many  farms  are  there  in 
Russia  ?     Will  there  be  a  million  of  them  ?  " 

"  What  of  it  ?  " 

"  What  of  it  ? "  and  his  eyes  sparkled,  and  he  became 
enlivened.  "  Well,  let  us  consider  the  matter.  I  am  not 
a  rich  man,  but  I  will  take  two  of  them.  You  took  a 
lad  to  the  kitchen ;  I  invited  him  to  go  with  me,  but  he 
would  not.  Even  if  there  were  ten  times  as  many,  we 
could  manage  them.  You  and  I  will  take  them.  We  will 
go  to  work  together :  he  will  see  me  work  and  will  learn 
how  to  live,  and  we  shall  sit  down  to  eat  at  the  same 
table,  and  he  will  hear  a  good  word  from  me  or  you. 
This  I  call  charity,  but  that  society  of  yours  is  all  non- 
sense." 

These  simple  words  startled  me.  I  could  not  help  but 
acknowledge  the  justice  of  his  words,  but  it  then  seemed 
to  me  that,  in  spite  of  this  justice,  my  undertaking  might 
still  be  useful.  But  the  farther  I  carried  on  this  matter, 
the  more  I  came  in  contact  with  the  poor,  the  more  fre- 
quently did  I  recall  these  words  and  the  greater  was  the 
meaning  which  they  began  to  have  for  me. 

Indeed,  I  arrive  in  an  expensive  fur  coat  or  am  brought 
there  in  my  own  carriage,  or  he  sees  my  two-thousand- 
rouble  apartments,  while  he  needs  a  pair  of  boots ;  or  he 
will  see  me  give  somebody  live  roubles  without  giving 
any  thought  to  it,  merely  because  I  wanted  to  do  so ;  he 
knows  that,  if  I  give  roubles  in  such  a  fashion,  I  do 
so  because  I  have  collected  such  a  lot  of  them  that  I  have 
many  more,  which  I  not  only  do  not  give  to  anybody,  but 
have  with  ease  taken  away  from  others.  What  else  can 
he  see  in  me  but  one  of  those  men  who  have  taken  pos- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  81 

session  of  what  ought  to  belong  to  him  ?  What  other 
feeling  can  he  have  for  me  but  the  desire  to  get  out  of  me 
as  many  as  possible  of  these  roubles,  which  I  have  taken 
away  from  him  and  from  others  ?  I  want  to  become 
more  closely  acquainted  with  him,  and  I  complain  that 
he  is  not  sincere ;  but  I,  to  tell  the  truth,  am  afraid  to  sit 
down  on  his  bed  for  fear  of  becoming  infested  with  lice 
or  catching  a  disease,  and  am  afraid  to  admit  him  to  my 
room,  when  he  comes  to  my  house  half-naked  and  wait^, 
not  even  in  the  antechamber,  but  in  the  vestibule.  And 
I  say  that  it  is  his  fault  that  I  cannot  come  closer  to  him, 
and  that  he  is  not  sincere. 

Let  the  most  cruel  of  men  try  to  eat  a  good  meal 
of  five  courses  in  the  company  of  men  who  have  eaten 
httle  or  who  eat  nothing  but  black  bread.  Not  one  of 
them  will  have  enough  courage  to  eat,  and  to  look  at 
the  hungry  persons  with  their  mouths  watering.  Conse- 
quently to  be  able  to  eat  with  pleasure  amidst  those  who 
do  not  get  enough  to  eat,  the  first  duty  is  to  hide  from 
them  and  to  eat  in  such  a  way  that  they  may  not  see  it. 
This  is  precisely  what,  before  anything  else,  we  actually 
do. 

And  so  I  looked  more  simply  at  our  life,  and  I  saw 
that  a  closer  communion  with  the  poor  was  not  acci- 
dentally more  difficult  for  us,  but  that  we  intentionally 
arranged  our  life  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  this  com- 
munion difficult. 

More  than  this :  looking  from  one  side  at  our  life,  at 
the  Hfe  of  the  rich,  I  noticed  that  everything  which 
is  regarded  as  a  good  in  this  life  consists  in  this,  or  is  at 
least  inseparably  connected  with  this,  that  we  should 
as  much  as  possible  segregate  ourselves  from  the  poor. 
Indeed,  all  the  striving  of  our  life  of  wealth,  beginning 
with  our  food,  our  attire,  our  housing,  our  purity,  and 
ending  with  our  education,  —  everything  has  for  its  main 
purpose  a  segregation  from  the  poor.     And  on  this  segre- 


82  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

gatiou  and  separation  by  impassable  walls  from  the  poor  at 
least  nine-tenths  of  all  our  wealth  is  wasted.  The  first 
thing  a  man  grown  rich  does  is  to  stop  eating  out  of  the 
same  bowl,  —  he  gets  all  kinds  of  appliances  and  sepa- 
rates himself  from  the  kitchen  and  from  the  servauts. 

He  feeds  his  servants  well,  so  that  their  mouths  shall 
not  water  over  his  savoury  food,  but  he  eats  by  himself ; 
but,  as  it  is  tiresome  to  eat  alone,  he  invents  things  that 
may  improve  the  food  and  beautify  the  table,  aud  the 
mere  nutrition  (the  dinners)  become  for  him  a  matter  of 
vanity  and  of  pride ;  and  the  reception  of  food  becomes 
for  him  a  means  for  segregating  himself  from  the  rest  of 
the  people.  It  is  unthinkable  for  a  rich  man  to  invite 
a  poor  man  to  his  table.  A  man  has  to  know  how  to 
take  a  lady  to  the  table,  how  to  bow,  sit,  eat,  wash  the 
mouth,  and  it  is  only  the  rich  who  know  all  this. 

The  same  takes  place  with  the  wearing  apparel.  If  a 
rich  man  wore  simple  garments,  which  only  protected  the 
body  against  the  cold,  —  short  or  long  fur  coats,  felt  or 
leather  boots,  a  peasant  coat,  pantaloons,  shirts,- — he 
would  need  very  little,  and  he  could  not  help,  if  he  had 
two  fur  coats,  but  give  one  to  him  who  had  none ;  but 
the  rich  man  begins  by  having  made  for  himself  wearing 
apparel  that  consists  of  several  parts  and  is  good  only  for 
certain  occasions,  and  so  is  of  no  use  to  the  poor  man. 
He  has  dress  coats,  vests,  sack  coats,  patent  leather  boots, 
capes,  shoes  with  French  heels,  garments  that  for  the 
sake  of  fashion  are  cut  up  into  small  pieces,  hunting 
coats  and  travelling  ulsters,  and  so  forth,  which  can  be 
put  to  use  only  in  a  condition  removed  from  poverty. 
Thus  the  wearing  apparel  also  becomes  a  means  for  segre- 
gating oneself  from  the  poor.  Fashion  makes  its  appear- 
ance, that  is,  that  which  separates  the  rich  from  the 
poor. 

The  same,  but  still  more  clearly,  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
matter  of  the  domicile.     In  order  to   live  alone  in  ten 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEX  ?  83 

rooms,  it  is  necessary  that  this  be  not  seen  by  those  who 
live  ten  at  a  time  in  one  room.  The  richer  a  man  is, 
the  more  difficult  it  is  to  get  access  to  him,  the  more 
porters  there  are  between  him  and  the  needy,  and  the  less 
possible  it  is  to  take  a  poor  man  over  his  carpets  and  seat 
him  in  velvet  chairs.  The  same  is  true  in  the  matter 
of  locomotion.  A  peasant  who  is  travelling  in  a  car  or 
sledge  must  be  very  cruel  not  to  give  a  passer-by  a  ride, 
—  he  has  both  the  room  and  the  possibility  for  it.  But 
the  more  elegant  the  carriage  is,  the  farther  it  is  removed 
from  the  possibility  of  giving  anybody  a  ride.  There 
is  even  a  saying  about  very  foppish  carriages  being 
egotists. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  whole  manner  of  life,  which  is 
expressed  by  the  word  cleanliness. 

Cleanliness !  Who  does  not  know  people,  especially 
women,  who  regard  this  cleanliness  as  a  high  virtue  ? 
And  who  does  not  know  the  extravagancies  of  this  clean- 
liness, which  has  no  hmits,  when  it  is  attained  by 
other  people's  work  ?  What  man  who  has  grown  rich 
has  not  experienced  in  his  own  person  with  what  diffi- 
culty he  has  acquired  this  cleanhness,  which  only 
confirms  the  proverb,  "  White  hands  love  other  people's 
work  ? " 

To-day  cleanliness  consists  in  changing  your  shirt 
every  day;  to-morrow  it  will  have  to  be  changed  twice 
a  day.  To-day  it  is  the  neck  and  the  hands  that  are  to 
be  washed  every  day ;  to-morrow  it  will  be  the  feet,  and 
another  day  the  whole  body,  and  at  that  with  a  particular 
kind  of  rubbing  down.  To-day  it  is  a  table-cloth  for  two 
days,  to-morrow  it  will  be  one  a  day,  and  another  time 
two  a  day.  To-day  the  lackey's  hands  should  be  clean ; 
to-morrow  he  is  to  wear  gloves  and  to  hand  a  letter  on 
a  clean  tray,  wearing  clean  gloves.  There  is  no  limit 
to  this  useless  cleanliness,  except  to  segregate  one  from 
the  rest  and  to  make  communion  with  them  impossible  so 


84  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

long  as  this  cleanliness  is  attained  through  the  labour 
of  other  people. 

Moreover,  when  I  grasped  it  all,  I  became  convinced 
that  what  in  general  is  called  education  is  also  the  same. 
•  Language  does  not  deceive :  it  calls  by  the  right  name 
what  people  understand  by  this  name.  The  masses  under- 
stand by  education  a  fashionable  dress,  a  pohte  conversa- 
tion, clean  hands,  —  cleanliness  of  a  certain  character. 
Of  such  a  man  they  say,  in  contradistinction  from  the 
rest,  that  he  is  an  educated  man.  In  the  circle  a  little 
more  cultured  than  the  masses  the  same  is  understood  by 
education,  but  to  its  conditions  they  add  playing  on  the 
piano,  the  knowledge  of  French,  the  writing  of  a  Russian 
letter  without  orthographical  mistakes,  and  a  still  greater 
external  cleanliness.  In  the  next  higher  circle  they  mean 
by  it  the  same  with  the  addition  of  the  English  language 
and  of  a  diploma  from  a  higher  institution  of  learning,  and 
a  still  higher  degree  of  cleanliness.  But  in  all  three  cases 
the  education  is  essentially  the  same.  Education  is  those 
forms  and  that  knowledge  which  are  to  segregate  a  man 
from  the  rest.  Its  aim  is  the  same  as  that  of  cleanliness, 
—  to  separate  a  person  from  the  mass  of  the  poor,  in 
order  that  they,  the  starving  and  the  freezing,  may  not 
see  us  celebrate.  But  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  conceal 
ourselves,  and  they  see. 

And  so  I  became  convinced  that  the  cause  which  made 
it  impossible  for  us  rich  men  to  help  the  city  paupers  also 
lay  in  the  impossibility  of  our  communion  with  them, 
and  that  we  ourselves  made  it  impossible  to  commune 
with  them  by  the  whole  life  which  we  lead,  by  the  use  to 
which  we  put  our  wealth.  I  became  convinced  that 
between  us,  the  rich,  and  the  poor  there  had  been  raised 
by  us  a  wall  of  cleanliness  and  of  education,  which  our 
wealth  has  reared,  and  that,  to  be  able  to  aid  the  poor,  we 
must  first  of  all  destroy  the  wall  and  make  possible  the 
application  of  Syutaev's  method,  —  distributing  the  poor. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  85 

And  thus  I  came  from  another  side  to  the  same  inference 
to  which  I  had  been  brought  by  the  train  of  my  thought 
concerning  the  causes  of  the  city  poverty :  the  cause  lay 
in  our  wealth. 


XV. 

I  BEGAN  to  analyze  the  matter  from  a  third,  a  purely 
personal,  side.  Among  the  number  of  the  phenomena 
which  struck  me  particularly  during  this  time  of  my 
philanthropic  activity,  there  was  a  very  strange  one  for 
which  I  could  not  for  a  long  time  find  any  explanation. 
It  was  this :  every  time  I  had  a  chance  in  the  street  or 
at  home  to  give  to  a  pauper,  without  talking  with  him,  some 
small  coin,  I  saw,  or  I  thought  I  saw,  joy  and  gratitude 
expressed  on  the  poor  man's  face,  and  I  myself  experienced 
a  pleasant  sensation  in  connection  with  this  form  of  philan- 
thropy. I  saw  that  I  did  what  the  man  wanted  and 
expected  of  me.  But  if  I  stopped  to  talk  with  the  poor 
man,  sympathetically  asking  him  about  his  former  and 
his  present  life,  and  more  or  less  entered  into  the  details 
of  his  life,  I  felt  that  I  could  no  longer  give  him  three  or 
twenty  kopeks,  and  began  to  rummage  in  my  purse,  doubt- 
ing how  much  to  give.  I  always  gave  more  and  always 
saw  that  the  poor  man  went  away  from  me  dissatisfied. 
But  if  I  entered  into  still  closer  communion  with  the  poor 
man,  I  was  in  still  greater  perplexity  as  to  how  much  to 
give,  and,  no  matter  how  much  I  gave,  the  poor  man 
grew  more  gloomy  and  more  dissatisfied. 

As  a  general  rule  it  always  turned  out  that  if,  after  a 
closer  contact  with  a  poor  man,  I  gave  him  three  roubles 
or  more,  I  nearly  always  saw  gloom,  dissatisfaction,  and 
even  resentment  on  the  face  of  the  man,  and  it  sometimes 
happened  that  he  took  ten  roubles  and  went  away,  with- 
out as  much  as  thanking  me  for  it,  as  though  I  had 
offended    him.      On  such   occasions  I  always   felt  ill   at 

86 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  87 

ease,  and  ashamed,  and  guilty.  But  if  I  watched  a  poor 
man  for  weeks,  months,  and  years,  aiding  him  and  express- 
ing my  views  to  him,  and  keeping  in  close  contact  with 
him,  my  relations  with  him  nearly  always  became  a 
torment,  and  I  saw  that  the  poor  man  hated  me.  And  I 
felt  that  he  was  right. 

If  I  walk  down  the  street,  and  he,  standing  in  the 
street,  asks  me,  among  the  number  of  other  passers-by, 
for  three  kopeks,  and  I  give  them  to  him,  I  am  for  him 
a  passer-by,  and  a  good  passer-by  at  that,  one  of  those 
who  give  a  thread  out  of  which  the  naked  man's  shirt  is 
formed ;  he  is  not  expecting  anything  more  than  a  thread, 
and  if  I  give  it  to  him,  he  is  sincerely  grateful  to  me. 
But  if  I  stop  to  talk  with  him,  as  with  a  man,  and  show 
him  that  I  want  to  be  more  than  a  passer-by  to  him ;  if, 
as  has  frequently  happened,  he  weeps,  as  he  tells  me  his 
woe,  he  no  longer  sees  in  me  a  passer-by,  but  what  I  want 
him  to  see  in  me,  —  a  good  man.  And  if  I  am  a  good 
man,  my  goodness  cannot  stop  at  two  dimes,  nor  at  ten 
roubles,  nor  at  ten  thousand.  It  is  impossible  to  be  a 
good  man  just  a  httle. 

Let  us  suppose  that  I  have  given  him  a  great  deal,  that 
I  have  fixed  him  up,  clothed  him,  put  him  on  his  feet,  so 
that  he  is  able  to  live  without  another  person's  aid ;  but 
for  some  reason  or  other,  whether  from  misfortune,  or 
from  weakness,  or  from  viciousness,  he  again  lacks  an 
overcoat,  and  underwear,  and  the  money  which  I  gave 
him,  and  he  is  again  freezing  and  starving,  and  he  again 
comes  to  me,  —  why  shall  I  refuse  him  ?  If  the  cause  of 
my  activity  consisted  in  obtaining  a  certain  material  aim, 
—  in  giving  him  so  many  roubles  or  such  and  such  an 
overcoat,  I  could  give  that  to  him,  and  feel  satisfied ;  but 
the  cause  of  my  activity  is  not  this :  the  cause  is  that  I 
want  to  be  a  good  man,  that  is,  I  want  to  see  myself  in 
every  other  man.  Every  man  understands  kindness  in 
this  manner,  and  not  otherwise.    And  so,  if  he  has  twenty 


88  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

times  squandered  what  you  have  giveu  him,  and  he  is 
again  freezing  and  starving,  and  you  are  a  good  man,  you 
cannot  help  but  give  him  some  again,  and  you  cannot 
stop  giving  him,  if  you  have  more  than  he  has.  But  if 
you  back  out,  you  show  by  this  that  everything  you  did, 
you  did  not  because  you  are  a  good  man,  but  because  you 
wanted  to  appear  as  a  good  man  before  all  men  and  before 
him. 

And  it  was  with  such  people,  when  I  had  to  back  out 
and  stop  giving,  and  thus  renounce  the  good,  that  I 
experienced  agonizing  shame. 

What  was  this  shame  ?  This  shame  I  had  experienced 
in  Lyapinski  House,  and  before  and  after  that  in  the 
country,  whenever  I  had  occasion  to  give  money  or  some- 
thing else  to  the  poor,  and  during  my  visits  to  the  city 
poor. 

A  case  of  shame  which  lately  happened  with  me 
reminded  me  and  elucidated  to  me  the  causes  of  the 
shame  which  I  used  to  experience  when  giving  money  to 
the  poor. 

This  happened  in  the  country.  I  needed  twenty  kopeks 
to  give  them  to  a  pilgrim ;  I  sent  my  son  to  borrow  them 
from  some  one ;  he  took  two  dimes  to  the  pilgrim,  and 
told  me  that  he  had  borrowed  them  from  the  cook.  A 
few  days  later  other  pilgrims  came,  and  I  again  needed 
twenty  kopeks ;  I  had  a  rouble ;  I  recalled  my  owing 
the  cook  twenty  kopeks,  and  went  to  the  kitchen,  in  the 
hope  that  the  cook  would  have  some  more  change.  I 
said  to  him : 

"  I  borrowed  two  dimes  from  you,  so  here  is  a  rouble." 

Before  I  had  finished  speaking,  the  cook  called  his  wife 
from  the  adjoining  room. 

"  Parasha,  take  it,"  he  said. 

Assuming  that  she  understood  what  I  needed,  I  gave 
her  the  rouble.  I  must  say  that  the  cook  had  lived  about 
a  week  in  our  house,  and  I  had  seen  his  wife,  though  I 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  89 

had  never  spoken  to  her.  I  was  on  the  point  of  saying 
to  her  that  I  wanted  change  for  it,  when  she  made  a  rapid 
motion  toward  my  hand,  intending  to  kiss  it,  no  doubt  on 
the  supposition  that  I  was  giving  her  the  rouble.  I  mut- 
tered something  and  left  the  kitchen.  I  felt  ashamed, 
painfully  ashamed,  as  I  had  not  felt  for  a  long  time.  I 
had  a  griping  pain,  and  I  felt  that  I  was  making  faces, 
and  I  groaned  from  shame,  as  I  ran  out  of  the  kitchen. 
This,  as  I  thought,  undeserved  and  unexpected  shame 
startled  me,  more  especially  since  I  had  not  felt  any 
shame  for  a  long  time  and  because  I,  as  an  old  man,  was 
living,  as  I  thought,  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  deserve 
such  shame.  I  was  very  much  startled  by  it.  I  told 
this  to  my  family,  and  to  my  friends,  and  all  agreed  that 
they  would  have  experienced  the  same.  I  began  to  wonder 
why  I  had  felt  ashamed.  An  incident  which  had  happened 
to  me  in  Moscow  gave  an  answer  to  it. 

I  reflected  on  this  incident,  and  I  found  an  explanation 
for  the  shame  which  I  had  experienced  with  the  cook's 
wife,  and  all  those  sensations  which  I  had  experienced 
during  my  Moscow  philanthropic  activity,  and  which  I 
now  experience  every  time  when  I  have  to  give  to  people 
something  beyond  that  small  pittance  to  mendicants  and 
pilgrims  which  I  am  in  the  habit  of  giving  and  consider 
the  work  not  of  charity,  but  of  decency  and  pohteness. 
If  a  man  asks  you  for  fire,  you  must  hght  a  match  for 
him,  if  you  have  one.  If  a  man  asks  you  for  three  or 
for  twenty  kopeks,  or  even  for  several  roubles,  you  must 
give  him  that  sum,  if  you  have  it.  This  is  a  matter  of 
politeness,  and  not  of  charity. 

Here  is  a  case  :  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  two  peas- 
ants with  whom  I  used  to  saw  wood  two  years  ago.  One 
Saturday  evening,  as  it  was  getting  dark,  I  went  with 
them  into  the  city.  They  were  going  to  their  master  to 
receive  their  wages.  As  we  approached  Dragomilov  Bridge 
we  met  an  old  man.     He  asked  for  an  alms,  and  I  gave 


90  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

him  twenty  kopeks.  As  I  gave  them  to  him,  I  reflected 
on  how  well  this  must  affect  Sem^n,  with  whom  I  had 
spoken  of  divine  things.  Semen,  that  Vladimir  peasant, 
who  had  a  wife  and  two  children  in  Moscow,  himself 
stopped,  turned  aside  the  skirt  of  his  caftan,  took  out  his 
purse,  rummaged  in  it  awhile,  and  fetched  out  three 
kopeks,  which  he  gave  to  the  old  man,  asking  him  to  give 
him  back  two  kopeks. 

The  old  man  showed  him  two  three-kopek  coins  and 
one  one-kopek  coin.  Sem^n  looked  at  these,  and  was  on 
the  point  of  taking  the  kopek,  hut  changed  his  mind,  took 
off  his  cap,  made  the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  went  on,  leav- 
ing the  three  kopeks  with  the  old  man.  I  knew  all  about 
Semen's  financial  condition :  he  had  neither  a  house,  nor 
any  property.  Up  to  the  day  on  which  he  gave  those 
three  kopeks  he  had  earned  six  roubles  and  fifty  kopeks. 
Consequently  six  roubles  and  fifty  kopeks  represented  all 
his  savings.  My  savings  were  approximately  equal  to  six 
hundred  thousand  roubles.  I  had  a  wife  and  children, 
so  had  Sem^n.  He  was  younger  than  I,  and  had  fewer 
children  ;  but  his  children  were  little,  while  I  had  two 
of  working  age,  so  that  our  situations,  outside  of  our  sav- 
ings, were  the  same,  —  I  may  say  mine  was  a  little  more 
favourable.  He  gave  three  kopeks,  I  gave  twenty.  What 
did  he  give,  and  what  did  I  give  ?  What  ought  I  to  have 
done  in  order  to  equal  Sem^n  ?  He  had  six  hundred 
kopeks ;  he  gave  away  one  of  them,  and  then  two  more. 
I  had  six  hundred  thousand  roubles.  In  order  to  give 
the  same  as  Sem^n  gave,  I  ought  to  have  given  three 
thousand  roubles,  and  have  asked  back  two  thousand 
roubles,  and,  if  I  could  get  no  change,  to  have  left  also 
these  two  thousand  roubles  with  the  old  man,  made  the 
sign  of  the  cross,  and  walked  on,  talking  peacefully  about 
how  factory  hands  live,  and  how  much  liver  is  worth  in 
Smolensk  Market.  I  thought  about  the  matter  then  and 
there,  but  it  was  only  much  later  that  I  drew  from  this 


WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN?  91 

incident  the  conclusion  which  inevitably  follows  from  it. 
This  deduction  seems  so  unusual  and  strange  that,  in  spite 
of  its  mathematical  accuracy,  it  takes  time  to  get  used  to 
it.  One  cannot  help  thinking  that  there  must  be  some 
mistake  about  it,  but  there  is  no  mistake.  There  is  only 
a  terrible  darkness  of  errors,  in  which  we  live. 

This  conclusion,  the  moment  I  arrived  at  it,  and  recog- 
nized its  accuracy,  explained  to  me  my  feeling  of  shame 
in  the  presence  of  the  cook's  wife  and  of  all  the  poor  to 
whom  I  gave  money. 

Indeed,  what  is  all  that  money  which  I  give  to  the 
poor,  and  which  the  cook's  wife  thought  that  I  was  giving 
to  her  ?  In  the  majority  of  cases  it  is  such  a  small  frac- 
tion that  it  is  not  even  possible  to  express  it  intelligibly 
for  Sem^n  and  the  cook's  wife, —  it  is  generally  a  mil- 
lionth, or  something  like  it.  I  give  so  little  that  my 
giving  of  money  is  not,  and  cannot  ^  .,  a  deprivation  for 
me ;  it  is  only  a  pastime  which  amuses  me  whenever  and 
however  I  please.  Even  so  did  the  cook's  wife  understand 
me.  If  I  give  a  man  from  the  street  a  rouble  or  twenty 
kopeks,  why  should  I  not  give  her  a  rouble  ?  For  the 
cook's  wife  this  giving  of  a  rouble  is  the  same  as  the 
throwing  of  ginger  snaps  among  the  people,  in  which 
gentlemen  indulge :  it  is  the  amusement  of  people  who 
have  a  lot  of  fool's  money.  I  felt  ashamed  because  the 
mistake  of  the  cook's  wife  immediately  showed  me  the 
view  which  she  and  all  who  are  not  well-to-do  must  have 
of  me :  "  He  is  throwing  about  fool's  money,"  that  is, 
money  which  he  has  not  worked  for. 

Indeed,  what  is  this  money  of  mine,  and  how  did  I  get 
possession  of  it  ?  Part  of  it  I  collected  from  the  land 
which  was  left  me  by  my  father.  The  peasants  sold  their 
last  sheep,  or  cow,  in  order  to  give  me  the  money.  Another 
part  of  my  money  is  what  I  have  received  for  my  works, 
for  writing  books.  If  my  books  are  harmful,  they  are 
being  bought  as  a  result  of  the  offence  which  I  have  com- 


92  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

mitted,  and  the  inouey  which  I  receive  for  it  is  ill-gotten ; 
but  if  my  books  are  useful  to  people,  the  result  is  even 
worse.  I  do  not  give  them  to  people,  but  say :  "  Give  me 
seventeen  roubles,  and  I  will  let  you  have  them."  And 
as  in  the  other  case,  a  peasant  will  sell  his  last  sheep, 
so  here  a  poor  student,  a  teacher,  a  poor  man  will  deprive 
himself  of  what  he  needs,  in  order  to  give  me  this  money. 
Thus  I  have  collected  a  lot  of  money,  and  what  do  I  do 
with  it  ?  I  take  this  money  to  the  city  and  give  it  to  the 
poor  only  when  they  comply  with  my  whims  and  come  to 
the  city  to  clean  for  me  the  sidewalks,  the  lamps,  my  boots, 
and  to  work  for  me  in  factories. 

For  this  money  I  haggle  with  them  for  everything  I 
.want,  that  is,  I  try  to  give  them  as  little  as  possible  aud 
to  get  as  much  as  possible  from  them.  Suddenly  I  begin 
without  any  premeditation,  just  for  the  fun  of  it,  to  give 
this  same  money  to  the  poor,  —  not  to  all  the  poor,  but 
only  to  those  I  take  a  fancy  to.  How  can  auy  poor  man 
help  but  hope  that,  perhaps,  it  will  be  his  luck  to  be  one 
of  those  to  whom  I  will  take  delight  in  giving  away  my 
fool's  money  ?  Thus  all  look  upon  me,  and  thus  did  the 
cook's  wife  look  at  me. 

I  have  been  so  dreadfully  deluded  that  this  tailing  of 
thousands  with  one  hand  from  the  poor,  and  slinging 
kopeks  back  to  those  to  whom  I  take  a  fancy,  I  call  doing 
good.     What  wonder,  then,  that  I  felt  ashamed  ? 

Yes,  before  doing  good,  I  must  myself  stand  outside 
of  evil,  and  be  in  such  a  condition  that  I  can  stop  doing 
evil.  But  my  whole  life  is  nothing  but  evil.  If  I  give 
away  one  hundred  thousand  roubles  I  shall  still  fail  to 
be  in  a  situation  where  it  is  possible  to  do  good,  because 
I  shall  have  five  hundred  thousand  roubles  left.  Only 
when  I  shall  have  nothing  left  shall  I  be  able  to  do  a 
little  good,  if  it  be  no  more  than  what  the  prostitute  did 
who  for  three  days  attended  on  the  sick  woman  and  her 
babe.     And  this  had  seemed  so  httle  to  me  !    And  I  dared 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  93 

to  think  of  the  good  !  The  first  iukliug  I  had  at  the  sight 
of  the  starving  and  the  freezing  at  Lyapinski  House,  as  to 
my  being  guilty  in  the  matter,  and  as  to  its  being  im- 
possible, impossible,  absolutely  impossible,  to  live  the  way 
I  lived,  —  this  alone  was  the  truth. 

So  what  is  to  be  done  ?  To  this  question,  if  any  one 
needs  an  answer  to  it,  I  shall,  God  willing,  give  a  detailed 
answer. 


XVI. 

It  was  hard  for  me  to  come  to  the  recognition  of  this, 
but  when  I  came  to  it,  I  was  horrified  at  the  delusion  in 
which  I  had  hved.  I  was  standing  up  to  my  ears  in  the 
mire  and  pretending  to  pull  others  out  of  it. 

Indeed,  what  did  I  mean  to  do  ?  I  want  to  do  good 
to  others,  I  want  to  see  to  it  that  men  shall  not  suffer 
from  hunger  and  from  cold,  —  that  they  shall  live  as  is 
proper  for  men. 

This  I  want,  and  I  see  that  in  consequence  of  violence, 
extortions,  and  all  kinds  of  tricks,  in  which  I  take  part, 
the  necessary  things  are  taken  away  from  the  working 
classes,  and  that  the  leisure  classes,  to  whom  I  belong, 
make  superabundant  use  of  the  labours  of  other  men. 

I  see  that  this  enjoyment  of  other  people's  work  is 
distributed  in  such  a  manner  that,  the  more  cunning  and 
the  more  complicated  the  device  which  a  man  practises, 
or  which  he  practised  from  whom  he  gets  his  inheritance, 
the  more  fully  does  he  enjoy  the  labours  of  others  and 
the  less  labour  does  he  himself  apply. 

First  come  a  Stieglitz,  Derviz,  Morozov,  Demidov, 
Yusupov,  then  the  richer  bankers,  merchants,  landed  pro- 
prietors, officials ;  then  the  less  wealthy  bankers,  mer- 
chants, officials,  landed  proprietors,  to  whom  I  belong ; 
then  the  lower  order  of  petty  traders,  innkeepers,  usurers, 
officers  of  rural  police,  teachers,  sextons,  clerks ;  then 
janitors,  lackeys,  coachmen,  water-carriers,  drivers,  ped- 
dlers ;  and  finally  the  working  people,  factory  hands  and 
peasants,  who  stand  in  relation  to  the  first  as  ten  is  to 
one. 

H 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  95 

I  see  that  the  life  of  nine-tenths  of  the  working  classes 
by  its  essence  demands  tension  and  work,  like  any  nat- 
ural life,  but  that  in  consequence  of  the  devices  which 
take  the  necessities  away  from  these  people  and  put 
them  under  oppressive  conditions,  this  life  is  getting 
harder  and  fuller  of  privations  from  year  to  year ;  but 
our  life,  the  life  of  the  men  of  leisure,  thanks  to  the  co- 
operation of  the  arts  and  of  the  sciences,  which  are 
directed  to  this  aim,  is  getting  from  year  to  year  more 
abundant,  more  attractive,  and  more  secure.  I  see  that 
in  our  day  the  hfe  of  the  working  men,  especially  of  the 
old  men,  women,  and  children  of  the  working  population, 
is  simply  being  ruined  by  the  intensified  work,  which 
bears  no  relation  to  the  nourishment  received ;  and  that 
this  life  is  not  made  secure  even  in  its  most  elementary 
necessities ;  and  that,  side  by  side  with  it,  the  hfe  of  the 
leisure  class,  of  wliich  I  am  a  member,  is  from  year  to 
year  more  and  more  filled  with  superabundance  and 
luxury,  and  becomes  more  and  more  secure,  and  has, 
finally,  in  its  favourites,  to  whom  I  belong,  reached  such 
a  degree  of  security  as  anciently  they  dreamed  about  only 
in  fairy  tales,  —  the  condition  of  the  owner  of  the  purse 
of  the  never-faihng  rouble,  that  is,  a  condition  in  which 
a  man  is  not  only  completely  freed  from  the  law  of  labour 
for  the  support  of  life,  but  also  acquires  the  ability  with- 
out labour  to  enjoy  all  the  benefits  of  hfe  and  to  transmit 
to  his  children  or  to  whom  it  may  please  him  that  purse 
with  the  never-failing  rouble. 

I  see  that  the  products  of  men's  labour  pass  more  and 
more  away  from  the  mass  of  the  labouring  people  to  those 
who  do  not  labour,  and  that  the  pyramid  of  the  social 
structure  seems  to  be  built  in  such  a  way  that  the  stones 
of  the  foundation  are  passing  to  the  apex,  the  rapidity  of 
this  passage  increasing  in  a  certain  geometric  progres- 
sion. I  see  that  what  is  taking  place  is  similar  to  what 
would  take  place  in  an  ant-hill,  if  the  society  of  the  ants 


96  WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN? 

lost  the  feeling  of  the  common  law,  if  some  of  the  ants 
should  begin  to  transfer  the  products  of  labour  to  the  top 
of  the  hill,  narrowing  down  the  base  and  widening  the 
top,  and  thus  compelHng  all  the  other  ants  to  transfer 
themselves  from  the  base  to  the  top.  I  see  that  instead 
of  the  ideal  of  a  Hfe  of  labour  there  has  risen  before  men 
the  ideal  of  the  purse  with  the  never-failing  rouble. 

The  rich,  I  among  them,  employ  every  device  to  confirm 
this  state  of  the  never-failing  rouble,  and  to  enjoy  it, 
move  to  the  city,  where  nothing  is  produced,  but  every- 
thing is  swallowed  up.  The  poor  labouring  man,  who  is 
fleeced  in  order  that  the  rich  man  may  have  this  magic, 
never-faihng  rouble,  pushes  to  the  city  after  him  and 
there  also  takes  up  the  devices,  and  either  arranges  for 
himself  a  condition  in  which  he  is  able  to  make  use  of 
many  things,  with  as  little  work  as  possible,  thus  only 
making  harder  the  state  of  the  labouring  classes ;  or, 
without  having  reached  this  condition,  he  perishes  or  finds 
his  way  among  the  number  of  the  starving  and  freezing 
inmates  of  the  doss-houses,  which  is  increasing  with  un- 
usual rapidity. 

I  belong  to  the  class  of  those  people  who  by  means  of 
all  kinds  of  devices  take  from  the  labouring  classes  the  ne- 
cessities, and  who  with  these  devices  have  created  for  them- 
selves the  magic  never-faihng  rouble,  which  tempts  these 
unfortunates.  I  want  to  aid  the  people,  and  so  it  is  clear 
that,  above  all  else,  I  must  not  fleece  them,  as  I  am 
doing  now,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  I  must  not  tempt 
them.  But  I,  by  aid  of  the  most  complex,  cunning,  evil 
devices,  accumulated  through  the  ages,  have  arranged  for 
myself  the  condition  of  the  proprietor  of  the  never-failing 
rouble,  that  is,  a  condition  in  which  I  can,  without  doing 
any  work  myself,  compel  hundreds  and  thousands  to  work 
for  me,  as  indeed  I  am  doing ;  and  I  imagine  that  I  pity 
people  and  want  to  help  them.  I  am  sitting  on  a  man's 
neck,  choking  him,  and  demanding  that  he  carry  me,  and. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  97 

without  getting  off  him,  I  assure  myself  and  others  that  I 
am  very  sorry  for  him  and  want  to  alleviate  his  condition 
by  all  possible  means  except  by  getting  off  his  neck. 

And  this  is  so  simple.  If  I  want  to  aid  the  poor,  that 
is,  to  cause  the  poor  not  to  be  poor,  I  must  not  be  pro- 
ductive of  them.  But  as  it  is,  1  by  my  own  choice  give 
roubles,  tens  and  hundreds  of  roubles,  to  the  poor  who 
have  departed  from  the  path  of  life ;  and  in  place  of  these 
roubles  I  take  away  thousands  from  people  who  have  not 
yet  departed  from  this  path,  and  thus  make  them  poor 
and  corrupt  them  even  more. 

That  is  very  simple ;  but  it  was  terribly  difficult  for 
me  to  understand  all  this  without  any  compromises  and 
excuses,  which  might  justify  my  condition.  All  I  had  to 
do  was  to  recognize  my  guilt,  and  everything  which  before 
had  appeared  strange,  complicated,  obscure,  insoluble, 
now  became  quite  intelligible  and  simple.  Above  all 
else,  the  path  of  my  life  which  resulted  from  this  ex- 
planation, instead  of  being  tangled,  and  insoluble  and 
agonizing,  as  it  had  been  before,  became  simple,  clear, 
and  agreeable. 

Who  am  I,  the  one  who  wants  to  help  people  ?  I  want 
to  help  people,  and  I  get  up  at  noon,  after  a  game  of  vint, 
with  four  candles  on  the  table,  all  worn  out  and  pampered, 
demanding  the  aid  and  service  of  hundreds  of  men,  and  I 
go  to  bring  aid,  —  to  whom  ?  To  people  who  get  up  at 
five,  sleep  on  boards,  live  on  cabbage  and  bread,  know 
how  to  plough,  mow,  fasten  a  helve,  dress  timber,  hitch  a 
horse,  sew,  —  people  who  in  strength,  endurance,  art,  and 
abstemiousness  are  a  hundred  times  stronger  than  I, 
and  I  come  to  aid  them  !  What  else  but  shame  could  1 
have  experienced  when  I  entered  into  communion  with 
these  people  ?  The  weakest  of  them,  a  drunkard,  an 
inmate  of  Rzhanov  House,  whom  they  call  a  loafer,  is  a 
hundred  times  more  industrious  than  I ;  his  balance,  so  to 
speak,  that  is,  the  relation  of  what  he  takes  from  people 


98  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

and  of  what  he  gives  to  them,  is  a  thousand  times  more 
favourable  for  him,  if  I  consider  what  I  take  from  people 
and  what  I  give  them. 

And  it  is  these  people  that  I  go  out  to  help.  I  go  to  help 
the  poor.  Who  is  poor  ?  There  is  no  one  who  is  poorer  than 
I  am.  I  am  a  feeble,  worthless  parasite,  who  can  exist 
only  under  the  most  exclusive  of  conditions,  who  can  exist 
only  if  thousands  will  labour  to  support  this  worthless 
life.  And  I,  the  louse  that  devours  the  leaf  of  a  tree,  want 
to  be  instrumental  in  the  growth  and  health  of  this  tree 
and  want  to  cure  it. 

This  is  the  way  I  pass  my  whole  life  :  I  eat,  talk,  and 
listen  ;  I  eat,  write,  or  read,  that  is,  again  talk  and  listen  ; 
I  eat,  I  play  ;  I  eat,  talk  again,  and  Hsten  ;  I  eat  and  go  to 
bed  ;  and  thus  it  is  every  day,  and  I  can  do  nothing  else. 
And,  in  order  that  I  may  be  able  to  do  so,  it  is  necessary 
for  the  janitor,  the  peasant,  the  sculhon,  the  cook,  the 
lackey,  the  coachman,  the  laundress  to  work  from  morning 
until  evening,  to  say  nothing  of  those  labours  of  people 
which  are  necessary  to  furnish  the  coachmen,  the  cooks, 
the  lackeys,  and  the  rest  with  those  tools  and  objects  with 
which  and  over  which  they  work  for  me,  —  the  axes, 
barrels,  brushes,  dishes,  furniture,  glasses,  blacking,  coal- 
oil,  hay,  wood,  meat.  And  all  these  people  work  hard 
the  whole  day  long  and  every  day,  in  order  that  I  may 
be  able  to  talk,  eat,  and  sleep.  And  I,  this  wretched  man, 
imagine  that  I  am  able  to  help  others  and  those  very 
men  who  are  supporting  me. 

What  is  surprising  is  not  that  I  did  not  help  any  one 
and  that  I  felt  ashamed,  but  that  such  an  insipid  idea 
could  have  occurred  to  me.  The  woman  who  tended  the 
sick  old  man  helped  him;  the  peasant  woman  who  cut 
off  a  slice  from  the  bread  which  was  got  from  the  soil 
through  labour  helped  the  mendicant ;  Sem^n  who  gave 
three  kopeks  frooi  his  earnings  to  the  beggar  helped  the 
beggar,  because  these  three  kopeks  actually  represented 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  99 

his  labour :  but  I  had  not  served  any  one,  had  not  worked 
for  any  one,  and  knew  well  that  my  money  did  not  rep- 
resent my  labour. 

And  so  I  felt  that  in  the  money  itself,  in  the  possession 
of  it,  there  was  something  base  and  immoral,  and  that 
the  money  itself  and  the  fact  that  I  had  it  was  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  all  the  evils  which  I  saw  before  me, 
and  I  asked  myself :  "  What  is  money  ? " 


XVII. 

Money  !     "What  is  money  ? 

Money  represents  labour.  I  have  met  educated  people 
who  asserted  that  money  represents  also  the  labour  of 
him  who  possesses  it.  I  must  confess  that  formerly  I  in 
some  obscure  manner  shared  this  opinion.  But  I  had 
to  go  to  the  bottom  of  what  money  was,  and  so,  to  find 
this  out,  I  turned  to  science. 

Science  says  that  there  is  nothing  unjust  and  prejudicial 
about  money,  that  money  is  a  natural  condition  of  social 
life,  —  necessary  :  (1)  for  convenience  of  exchaDge,  (2)  for 
the  establishment  of  measures  of  value,  (3)  for  saving, 
and  (4)  for  payments.  The  obvious  phenomenon  that,  if 
I  have  in  my  pocket  three  superfluous  roubles  which  are 
of  no  use  to  me,  I  need  only  to  whistle  in  order  to  col- 
lect in  every  civilized  city  hundreds  of  men  who  are 
prepared  for  these  three  roubles  to  do  at  my  will  the  hard- 
est, most  detested,  and  most  humiliating  work,  is  not  due 
to  money,  but  to  very  complex  conditions  of  the  economic 
life  of  the  nations.  The  control  exercised  by  one  set  of 
men  over  another  is  not  due  to  money,  but  to  this,  that 
the  labourer  does  not  receive  the  full  value  of  his  labour ; 
and  he  does  not  get  the  full  value  of  his  labour  on 
account  of  the  properties  of  capital,  interest,  wages,  and 
of  the  complex  relations  between  them  and  between  the 
production,  distribution,  and  employment  of  wealth  them- 
selves. 

To  express  myself  in  Eussian  fashion,  it  turns  out  that 

people  who  have  money  have  the  right  to  twist  those  who 

have  no  money  into  ropes.     But  science  says  that  this  is 

100 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  101 

a  different  matter.  Science  says  that  in  all  kinds  of  pro- 
ductions three  factors  take  part :  laud,  stored-up  labour 
(capital),  and  labour.  From  the  difi'erent  relations  of 
these  factors  of  production  among  themselves,  —  from  the 
fact  that  the  tirst  two  factors  —  land  and  capital  —  are  not 
in  the  hands  of  the  working  men,  but  in  those  of  other 
people,  —  from  this  and  from  the  very  complex  combina- 
tions which  arise  from  it  there  follows  the  enslavement 
of  one  set  of  men  by  another. 

What  is  the  cause  of  that  monetary  kingdom  which 
startles  us  all  by  its  injustice  and  cruelty  ?  Why  does 
one  set  of  people  rule  others  by  means  of  money  ?  Sci- 
ence says :  this  is  due  to  the  division  of  the  factors  of 
production  and  the  consequent  combinations,  which 
oppress  the  labourer.  This  answer  has  always  seemed 
strange  to  me,  not  only  in  that  it  leaves  out  one  part  of 
the  question,  namely,  as  regards  the  significance  of  money 
in  the  matter,  —  but  also  by  that  division  of  the  factors 
of  production,  which  to  an  unbiassed  man  always  appears 
artificial  and  as  not  corresponding  to  reality. 

It  is  asserted  that  in  every  production  three  factors 
take  part,  —  land,  capital,  and  labour,  —  and  in  this  divi- 
sion it  is  understood  that  wealth  (or  its  valuation, — 
money)  is  naturally  subdivided  among  those  who  own 
this  or  that  factor :  the  rent  —  the  value  of  the  land  — 
belongs'  to  the  landowner,  the  interest  to  the  capi- 
talist, and  the  wages  for  the  labour  to  the  working 
man. 

Is  this  true  ?  In  the  first  place,  is  it  true  that  three 
factors  take  part  in  every  production  ?  Here,  right  about 
me,  the  production  of  hay  is  taking  place,  while  I  am 
writing  this.  Of  what  does  this  production  consist  ?  I 
am  told :  of  the  land  which  made  the  grass  grow ;  of  the 
capital,  —  the  scythes,  rakes,  forks,  wagons,  necessary  for 
the  making  of  the  hay ;  and  of  the  labour.  But  I  see 
that  this  is  not  true.     In  addition  to   the  land,  other 


102  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

factors  take  part  in  the  production  of  the  hay :  the  sun, 
the  water,  the  social  order,  which  kept  this  grass  from 
being  trespassed  upon,  the  knowledge  of  the  working  men, 
their  ability  to  speak  and  understand  words,  and  many 
other  factors  of  production,  which  for  some  reason  are  not 
recognized  by  poHtical  economy. 

The  power  of  the  sun  is  just  as  much  a  factor  of  every 
production  as  the  land,  and  even  more  necessary  than  the 
land.  I  can  imagine  the  condition  of  people  in  which 
(say,  in  the  city)  one  set  of  men  assume  the  right  to  shut 
off  the  sun  from  others  by  means  of  walls  or  trees ;  why 
is  it  not  included  among  the  factors  of  production  ? 
Water  is  another  factor,  which  is  just  as  important  as 
the  land.  The  same  is  true  of  the  air.  I  can  again 
imagine  people  deprived  of  water  and  of  fresh  air,  because 
other  people  arrogate  to  themselves  the  right  to  the  exclu- 
sive possession  of  the  water  and  the  air  which  others 
need.  Social  security  is  another  such  factor ;  food  and 
wearing  apparel  are  for  the  working  men  just  such  factors 
of  production,  and  this  is  acknowledged  by  certain  econo- 
mists. Education,  the  ability  to  speak,  which  gives  the 
possibility  of  applying  a  different  kind  of  work,  is  just 
such  a  factor. 

I  could  fill  a  whole  volume  with  such  omitted  factors 
of  production.  Why,  then,  have  they  chosen  just  those 
three  factors  and  put  them  at  the  basis  of  science  ?  The 
sunlight  and  the  water  may,  just  like  the  land,  be  taken 
as  separate  factors  of  production ;  the  labourer's  food  and 
wearing  apparel,  knowledge  and  its  transmission  may  be 
taken  as  separate  factors  of  production.  Why  are  the 
sunbeams,  the  water,  food,  knowledge,  not  taken  as  sepa- 
rate factors  of  production,  instead  of  only  the  land,  the 
tools  of  labour,  and  the  labour  itself  ?  There  can  be  no 
other  reason  than  that  only  in  rare  cases  do  men  lay 
claim  to  the  right  of  using  the  sunbeams,  water,  air,  food, 
and  the  right  to  speak  and  listen,  whereas  in  our  society 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       103 

people  constantly  lay  claim  to  the  use  of  the  land  and  the 
tools  of  labour. 

There  is  no  other  basis,  and  so  I  see,  in  the  first  place, 
that  the  division  of  the  factors  of  production  into  three 
factors  only  is  quite  arbitrary  and  does  not  lie  in  the 
essence  of  things  itself.  But,  perhaps,  this  division  is  so 
characteristic  of  men  that  where  economic  relations  form 
themselves,  these  three,  and  only  these  three,  factors  of 
production  are  immediately  pushed  to  the  front.  Let  us 
see  whether  that  is  so. 

I  look  at  those  nearest  to  me,  the  Russian  colonists, 
of  whom  there  are  a  million.  The  colonists  come  to  some 
new  land,  settle  down  upon  it,  and  begin  to  work,  and  it 
does  not  occur  to  any  one  that  a  man  who  does  not  make 
use  of  the  land  could  claim  any  right  to  it,  and  the  land 
does  not  claim  any  special  rights ;  on  the  contrary,  the 
colonists  consciously  recognize  the  land  as  a  common  pos- 
session, and  they  consider  it  right  for  every  man  to  mow 
and  plough  wherever  he  pleases  and  as  much  ground  as 
he  can  take.  The  colonists  procure  the  tools  of  labour 
for  the  working  of  the  land,  for  the  gardens,  for  the  build- 
ing of  their  houses,  and  it  does  not  even  occur  to  any  one 
that  the  tools  of  labour  can  in  themselves  bring  an 
income,  nor  does  the  capital  lay  claim  to  any  privileges ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  colonists  consciously  recognize  that 
all  interest  for  the  tools  of  labour,  for  grain  loaned,  for 
capital  is  unjust.  The  colonists  work  on  free  land  with 
their  own  tools  or  with  such  as  have  been  loaned  to  them 
without  interest,  each  of  them  working  for  himself,  or 
all  together  for  the  common  good,  and  in  such  a  com- 
mune it  is  impossible  to  find  rents,  or  interest  on  capital 
or  wages. 

Speaking  of  such  a  commune  I  am  not  indulging  in 
reveries,  but  am  describing  what  has  always  taken  place, 
not  only  in  the  case  of  the  Russian  colonists,  but  also 
everywhere  so  long  as  man's  natural  quality  has  not  been 


104  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

violated  by  anything.  I  am  describing  what  to  every 
man  appears  natural  and  sensible.  People  settle  on  the 
land,  and  each  person  takes  hold  of  the  work  which  is 
proper  for  him,  and,  having  elaborated  what  he  needs  for 
his  work,  he  does  his  own  work.  But  if  it  is  more  con- 
venient for  people  to  work  together,  they  form  associa- 
tions ;  but  neither  in  the  farming  in  severalty,  nor  in  the 
associations  will  the  factors  of  production  be  separate,  but 
there  will  be  labour  and  the  necessary  conditions  of 
labour :  the  sun  which  warms  all ;  the  air  which  people 
breathe,  the  water  which  they  drink,  the  land  on  which 
they  work  ;  raiment  on  their  bodies,  food  in  their  bellies ; 
the  crowbar,  the  spade,  the  plough,  the  machine,  with 
which  they  work,  —  and  it  is  evident  that  neither  the  sun- 
beams,  nor  the  air,  nor  the  water,  nor  the  earth,  nor  the 
raiment  on  their  bodies,  nor  the  crowbar,  with  which  they 
work,  nor  the  spade,  nor  the  plough,  nor  the  machine,  with 
which  they  work  in  associations,  can  belong  to  any  one 
but  those  who  make  use  of  the  sunbeams,  breathe  the  air, 
drink  the  water,  eat  the  bread,  cover  their  bodies,  and 
work  with  their  spades  or  machines,  because  all  this  is 
needed  by  those  only  who  make  use  of  it. 

When  people  act  in  this  manner,  we  all  see  that  they 
act  as  is  proper  for  men,  that  is,  sensibly.  And  thus,  as 
I  observe  the  economic  relations  of  men  in  the  moment 
of  their  formation,  I  do  not  see  that  the  division  into 
three  factors  of  production  is  proper  to  men,  I  see,  on 
the  contrary,  that  it  is  improper  and  senseless.  But 
perhaps  the  division  into  three  factors  fails  only  in  primi- 
tive human  societies  ;  perhaps  it  is  inevitable  with  the 
increase  of  the  population  and  the  evolution  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  this  division  has  taken  place  in  European  society, 
and  we  cannot  help  but  acknowledge  the  accomplished 
fact. 

Let  us  see  whether  this  is  so.  We  are  told  that  in 
European  society  the  division  of  the  factors  of  production 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  105 

has  taken  place ;  that  is,  that  some  people  own  the  land, 
others  the  tools  of  labour,  and  others  again  are  deprived 
both  of  the  land  and  the  tools  of  labour.  The  labourer  is 
deprived  of  the  land  and  of  the  tools  of  labour.  We  are 
so  accustomed  to  this  assertion  that  we  are  no  longer 
startled  by  its  strangeness.  In  this  expression  there  is 
an  inner  contradiction.  The  concept  of  a  labourer  in- 
cludes the  concept  of  the  land  on  which  he  lives,  and  of 
the  tools  with  which  he  works.  If  he  did  not  live  on  the 
land,  and  did  not  have  any  tools  of  labour,  he  would  not 
be  a  labourer.  There  has  never  been,  and  there  never  can 
be,  a  labourer  who  is  deprived  of  the  land  and  of  the  tools 
of  labour. 

There  cannot  be  a  farmer  without  the  land  on  which 
he  works,  nor  without  a  scythe,  a  cart,  a  horse ;  nor  can 
there  be  a  shoemaker  without  a  house  on  the  land,  without 
the  water,  the  air,  and  the  tools  of  labour,  with  which  he 
works.  If  a  peasant  has  no  land,  no  horse,  and  no  scythe, 
and  a  shoemaker  has  no  water  and  no  awl,  this  means 
that  some  one  has  driven  him  off  the  land  and  has  taken 
away  from  him  or  cheated  him  out  of  his  scythe,  his  cart, 
his  horse,  his  awl ;  but  it  can  nowise  mean  that  there  can 
be  farmers  without  ploughs  and  shoemakers  without  tools. 
As  a  fisherman  is  unthinkable  on  the  land  and  without 
his  tackle  unless  some  one  has  driven  him  off  the  water 
and  has  taken  the  tackle  from  him ;  even  so,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  think  of  a  peasant,  a  shoemaker,  without  the  land 
on  which  he  lives,  and  without  instruments  of  labour, 
unless,  indeed,  some  one  has  driven  him  off  the  land  and 
has  taken  the  tools  away  from  him. 

There  may  be  people  who  are  driven  from  one  plot  of 
earth  to  another,  and  who  have  been  deprived  of  their 
tools  of  labour,  and  who  are  forcibly  compelled  with  other 
people's  tools  of  labour  to  produce  objects  which  they  do 
not  need,  but  this  does  not  mean  that  such  is  the  property 
of  the  production,  but  only  that  there  are  cases  when  the 


106  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

natural  property  of  production  is  violated.  But  if  we 
accept  as  factors  of  production  everything  of  which  the 
labourer  may  be  deprived  by  another  through  force,  why 
should  we  not  regard  the  claims  to  the  slave's  person  as  a 
factor  of  production  ?  Why  should  we  not  regard  the 
claims  to  the  sun's  rays,  to  the  air,  to  the  water,  as  just 
such  factors  ? 

There  may  appear  a  man  who,  building  up  a  wall,  will 
screen  a  man  from  the  sun,  or  who  will  lead  the  river 
water  into  a  pond  and  thus  poison  the  water ;  there  may 
appear  a  man  who  will  claim  the  whole  man  as  his  chat- 
tel ;  but  neither  pretension,  even  if  it  be  put  into  execu- 
tion through  force,  can  be  recognized  as  a  basis  for  the 
division  of  the  factors  of  production,  and  so  it  is  just  as 
incorrect  to  accept  the  imaginary  right  to  the  land  and  to 
the  tools  of  labour  as  special  factors  of  production,  as  to 
regard  the  imaginary  right  to  the  use  of  the  sun's  rays, 
the  air,  the  water,  and  the  person  of  another  man  as 
special  factors  of  production.  There  may  be  men  who 
will  lay  claim  to  the  land  and  to  the  tools  of  a  man's 
labour,  just  as  there  have  been  men  who  lay  claim  to  the 
labour;^r's  person,  and  as  there  may  be  men  who  lay  claim 
to  the  exclusive  use  of  the  sun,  the  water,  the  air ;  there 
may  be  men  who  drive  a  labourer  from  place  to  place,  and 
who  by  force  take  away  from  him  the  products  of  his 
labour  as  they  are  manufactured,  and  even  the  tools  of 
his  labour,  and  compel  him  to  work  for  the  master  and 
not  for  himself,  as  is  the  case  in  the  factories,  —  all  that 
is  possible :  but  there  can  still  be  no  labourer  without 
land  and  without  tools,  even  as  one  man  cannot  be 
another  man's  chattel,  although  people  have  asserted  for 
a  long  time  that  he  can  be. 

Just  as  the  assertion  of  the  right  o  another  man's 
property  could  not  deprive  a  slave  of  his  inborn  property 
of  seeking  his  own  good,  and  not  that  of  the  master,  even 
so  now  the  assertion  of  the  right  to  the  possession  of  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  107 

land  and  to  the  tools  of  other  people's  labour  cannot 
deprive  the  labourer  of  each  man's  iunate  right  to  live  on 
the  land  and  work  with  his  own  tools  or  with  those  of  the 
commune,  in  order  to  produce  what  he  considers  useful 
for  himself. 

All  that  science,  observing  the  present  economic  con- 
dition, can  say  is  this,  that  there  exist  claims,  which 
certain  people  lay  to  the  land  and  the  tools  of  working 
men's  labour,  and  in  consequence  of  which,  for  a  part  of 
these  working  men  (by  no  means  all),  the  conditions  of 
production  Characteristic  of  man  are  violated  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  labourers  are  deprived  of  the  land  and  of 
the  tools  of  labour  and  are  driven  to  the  use  of  other 
people's  tools  of  labour ;  but  nowise  this,  that  this  acci- 
dental violation  of  the  law  of  production  is  itself  the  law 
of  production. 

In  affirming  that  the  division  of  the  factors  of  pro- 
duction is  the  basic  law  of  production,  the  economist  does 
precisely  what  a  zoologist  would  do,  who,  seeing  a  large 
number  of  siskins  with  clipped  wings  in  little  houses, 
should  conclude  from  this  that  the  little  house  and  the 
small  water-pail,  which  is  lifted  on  rails,  are  the  most 
essential  condition  of  the  life  of  the  birds,  and  that  the 
life  of  the  birds  is  composed  of  these  three  factors.  No 
matter  how  many  siskins  with  clipped  wings  there  may 
be  in  little  card  houses,  the  zoologist  cannot  recognize  the 
card  houses  as  a  natural  quality  of  the  birds.  No  matter 
how  many  labourers  may  be  driven  from  their  place  and, 
deprived  of  the  productions  and  the  tools  of  their  labour, 
the  labourer's  natural  property  of  living  on  the  land  and 
producing  with  his  tools  what  he  pleases  will  always  be 
the  same. 

There  are  pretensions  which  some  people  have  to  the 
labourer's  land  and  tools  of  labour,  even  as  in  ancient 
times  there  existed  the  pretensions  of  some  people  to  the 
persons  of  others ;  but  under  no  condition  can  there  be  a 


108  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

division  of  men  into  masters  and  slaves,  such  as  they 
wished  to  establish  in  the  ancient  world,  and  there  can 
under  no  conditions  be  a  division  of  the  factors  of  produc- 
tion into  land  and  capital,  such  as  the  economists  want  to 
establish  in  modern  society. 

It  is  these  illegal  pretensions  which  some  people  have 
to  the  liberty  of  others  that  science  calls  natural  proper- 
ties of  production.  Instead  of  taking  its  bases  in  the 
natural  properties  of  human  societies,  science  took  them 
in  a  specific  case  and,  wishing  to  justify  this  specific  case, 
recognized  one  man's  right  to  the  land,  which  feeds 
another,  and  to  the  tools  of  labour,  with  which  another 
works,  that  is,  it  recognized  a  right  which  never  existed 
and  never  can  exist,  and  which  bears  a  contradiction  in 
its  very  expression,  because  the  right  to  the  land  claimed 
by  a  man  who  does  not  work  on  the  land  is  in  reality 
nothing  but  the  right  to  make  use  of  the  land  which  I  do 
not  use ;  and  the  right  to  the  tools  of  labour  is  nothing, 
but  the  right  to  work  with  tools  with  which  I  do  not 
work. 

By  its  division  of  the  factors  of  production,  science 
affirms  that  the  natural  condition  of  the  labourer  is  that 
unnatural  condition  in  which  he  is ;  just  as  in  the  ancient 
world  they  affirmed,  in  dividing  people  into  citizens  and 
slaves,  that  the  unnatural  condition  of  the  slaves  is  a 
natural  property  of  man.  This  division,  which  is  accepted 
by  science  only  in  order  to  justify  the  existing  evil,  which 
is  placed  by  it  at  the  basis  of  all  its  investigations,  has 
had  this  effect,  that  science  tries  in  vain  to  give  explana- 
tions of  existing  phenomena,  and,  denying  the  clearest 
and  simplest  answers  to  questions  that  present  themselves 
to  it,  gives  answers  which  are  devoid  of  contents. 

The  question  of  economic  science  is  as  follows :  What 
is  the  cause  of  this,  that  some  men,  who  have  land  and 
capital,  are  able  to  enslave  those  who  have  no  land 
and  no  capital  ?     The  answer  which  presents  itself   to 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  109 

common  sense  is  this,  that  it  is  due  to  the  money,  which 
has  the  power  of  enslaving  people.  But  science  denies 
this  and  says :  This  is  not  due  to  the  property  of  money, 
but  because  some  have  land  and  capital,  and  others  have 
not.  We  ask  why  people  who  have  land  and  capital 
enslave  those  who  have  none,  and  we  are  told :  Because 
they  have  land  and  capital.  But  that  is  precisely  what 
we  want  to  know.  The  privation  of  the  land  and  of  the 
tools  of  labour  is  that  very  enslavement.  The  answer  is 
like  this:   Facit  dorviire  q^iia  hahet  virhUem  dormitivam. 

But  life  does  not  cease  putting  its  essential  question, 
and  even  science  itself  sees  it  and  tries  to  answer  it,  but 
is  absolutely  unable  to  do  so  as  long  as  it  rests  on  its  fun- 
damental principles,  and  keeps  moving  about  in  its  magic 
circle.  In  order  to  be  able  to  do  so,  it  must  first  of  all 
renounce  its  false  division  of  the  factors  of  production, 
that  is,  the  recognition  of  the  consequences  of  phenomena 
as  their  causes,  and  must  seek,  at  first  the  nearer,  and 
then  the  more  remote,  cause  of  those  phenomena  w^hich 
form  the  subject  of  its  investigations.  Science  must 
answer  the  question  as  to  what  the  cause  is^  of  the  fact 
that  some  people  are  deprived  of  the  land  and  of  the  tools 
of  labour,  while  others  own  them,  or,  what  cause  produces 
the  alienation  of  the  land  and  of  the  tools  of  labour  from 
those  who  work  the  land  and  employ  the  tools. 

The  moment  science  will  put  to  itself  this  question, 
there  will  appear  entirely  new  considerations,  which  will 
turn  upside  down  all  the  propositions  of  the  former  quasi- 
science,  which  moves  in  a  hopeless  circle  of  assertions  that 
the  wretched  condition  of  the  labourer  is  due  to  its  being 
wretched.  To  simple  people  it  seems  indubitable  that 
the  nearest  cause  of  the  enslavement  of  one  class  of  men 
by  another  is  money.  But  science,  denying  this,  says 
money  is  only  an  instrument  of  exchange  wliich  has 
nothing  in  common  with  the  enslavement  of  people.  Let 
us  see  whether  this  is  so. 


XVIII. 

Whence  does  money  come  ?  Under  what  condition 
does  a  nation  always  have  money,  and  under  what  con- 
ditions do  we  know  nations  who  do  not  use  money  ? 

A  tribe  hves  in  Africa,  or  in  Austraha,  as  anciently  the 
Scythians  or  Dr^vlyans  lived.  The  tribe  lives,  ploughing, 
raising  cattle,  planting  gardens.  We  hear  of  it  only  when 
history  begins ;  but  history  begins  with  the  incursion  of 
conquerors.  The  conquerors  always  do  one  and  the  same 
thing :  they  take  from  the  tribe  everything  they  can,  — 
its  cattle,  its  grain,  its  stuffs,  and  even  captives,  and  carry 
it  all  off.  A  few  years  later  the  conquerors  return,  but 
the  tribe  has  not  ye  recovered  from  its  desolation,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  take  away,  so  the  conquerors  invent 
another,  a  better  met  lod  for  exploiting  the  forces  of  this 
tribe. 

These  methods  are  very  simple  and  occur  naturally  to 
all  people.  The  first  method  is  personal  slavery.  This 
method  has  the  inconvenience  of  demanding  the  manage- 
ment of  all  the  wcrking  forces  of  the  tribe,  and  the 
feeding  of  all,  and  so  there  naturally  presents  itself  a 
second  method,  —  of  leaving  the  tribe  on  its  land,  but 
recognizing  it  as  belonging  to  the  conquerors  and  distrib- 
uting it  to  the  retainers,  in  order  to  exploit  the  tribe's 
labour  through  the  retainers.  But  this  method  has  also 
its  inconveniences.  The  retainers  have  to  look  after  all 
the  productions  of  the  tribe,  and  a  third  method,  just  as 
primitive  as  the  first  two,  is  introduced  :  it  is  the  peremp- 
tory demand  of  a  term  tribute  which  the  conquered  have 
to  pay. 

110 


WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  Ill 

The  aim  of  the  conquerors  consists  in  taking  from  the 
conquered  as  many  productions  of  their  labour  as  possible. 
It  is  evident  that,  in  order  to  be  able  to  take  as  much  as 
possible,  the  conqueror  must  take  such  objer  ts  as  are  of 
the  highest  value  among  the  people  of  thi£  tribe,  and 
which,  at  the  same  time,  are  not  bulky  and  inconvenient 
to  store,  —  pelts,  gold.  And  so  the  conquerors  generally 
impose  a  term  tribute  in  pelts  or  in  gold  on  each  family 
or  gens,  and  by  means  of  this  tribute  in  the  most  con- 
venient way  exploit  the  tools  of  labour  of  this  tribe.  The 
pelts  and  the  gold  are  nearly  all  taken  from  the  tribe,  and 
so  the  conquered  have  to  sell  to  one  another  and  to  the 
conqueror  and  his  retainers  everything  they  have  for 
gold. 

Precisely  this  took  place  in  antiquity  and  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  is  taking  place  now.  In  the  ancient  world, 
where  one  nation  was  frequently  conquered  by  another, 
and  where  the  consciousness  of  the  human  equality  of 
men  was  absent,  personal  slavery  was  the  most  popular 
means  of  enslavement  practised  by  one  set  of  men  against 
another,  and  in  the  personal  slavery  lay  the  centre  of 
gravity  of  this  enslavement.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the 
feudal  system,  that  is,  the  territorial  possession  which  is 
connected  with  it,  and  the  vassalage  partially  take  the 
place  of  slavery,  and  the  centre  of  gravity  of  enslavement 
is  transferred  from  the  person  to  the  land.  In  modern 
times,  since  the  discovery  of  America  and  the  develop- 
ment of  trade  and  the  influx  of  gold,  which  is  accepted 
as  the  universal  money  standard,  the  monetary  tribute 
becomes,  with  the  enforcement  of  the  political  power,  the 
chief  instrument  for  the  enslavement  of  men,  and  upon  it 
all  the  economic  relations  of  men  are  based.  In  a  volume 
of  literary  productions  there  is  an  article  by  Professor 
Yanzhiil,  which  describes  the  latest  history  of  the  Fiji 
Islands.  If  I  tried  to  invent  a  most  telling  illustration 
of  how  in  our  time  the  peremptory  demand  of  money  has 


112  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

become  the  chief  instrument  for  the  enslavement  of  one 
class  of  people  by  another,  I  could  not  discover  one  which 
would  be  more  glaring  and  more  convincing  than  this  true 
story,  which  is  based  on  documentary  evidence  and  took 
place  recently. 

On  certain  islands  of  the  South  Sea,  in  Polynesia,  there 
lives  the  Fiji  nation.  The  whole  group  of  the  islands, 
says  Professor  Yanzhiil,  consists  of  tiny  islands  which 
approximately  cover  a  territory  of  forty  thousand  square 
miles.  Only  half  of  the  islands  are  inhabited,  by  a  popu- 
lation of  150,000  natives  and  fifteen  hundred  whites.  The 
natives  have  long  since  come  out  of  their  savage  state, 
excel  in  ability  all  the  other  natives  of  Polynesia,  and 
represent  a  nation  capable  of  work  and  of  development, 
which  they  have  proved  by  having  lately  become  good 
farmers  and  stock-raisers. 

The  inhabitants  were  prosperous,  but  in  1859  the  new 
kingdom  found  itself  in  a  desperate  state.  The  people 
of  the  Fiji  Islands  and  their  representative,  Cacabo,  needed 
money.  The  sum  of  '$45,000  was  wanted  by  the  Fiji 
kingdom,  in  order  to  pay  a  contribution  or  damages,  which 
the  United  States  of  North  America  demanded  for  certain 
violence  which,  it  was  claimed,  the  Fijians  had  shown  to 
some  citizens  of  the  American  republic.  For  this  purpose 
the  Americans  sent  a  squadron,  which  suddenly  seized  a 
few  of  the  better  islands  as  a  pledge,  and  even  threatened 
to  bombard  and  destroy  the  colonies,  if  the  contribution 
should  not  be  handed  to  the  representatives  of  America 
at  a  certain  time. 

The  Americans  were  among  the  first  colonists  to  appear, 
with  the  missionaries,  in  Fiji.  Selecting  or  seizing,  under 
one  pretext  or  another,  the  best  plots  of  ground  on  the 
islands,  and  there  laying  out  cotton  and  coffee  plantations, 
the  Americans  hired  whole  crowds  of  natives,  binding 
them  by  contracts,  which  were  not  familiar  to  the  savages, 
or  acting  upon  them  through  especial  contractors  or  pur- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  113 

veyors  of  live  chattel.  Conflicts  between  such  planters 
and  the  natives,  upon  whom  they  looked  as  slaves,  were 
inevitable,  and  it  was  some  of  these  that  served  as  a  cause 
for  the  demand  of  a  contribution  by  America. 

In  spite  of  its  prosperity,  Fiji  has  almost  down  to  our 
time  preserved  the  so-called  system  of  payment  in  kind, 
which  in  Europe  was  current  only  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
No  money  was  in  circulation  among  the  natives,  and  the 
whole  commerce  had  exclusively  the  character  of  barter ; 
commodity  was  exchanged  for  commodity,  and  the  few 
public  and  governmental  levies  were  made  in  country 
produce.  What  were  the  Fijians  and  their  king  Cacabo 
to  do,  when  the  Americans  categorically  demanded  $45,- 
000,  under  threat  of  the  most  summary  consequences  in 
case  of  their  non-compliance  ?  For  the  Fijians  the  figure 
itself  was  something  inaccessible,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
money,  which  they  had  never  seen  in  such  a  large  sum. 

Cacabo  took  counsel  with  the  other  chiefs,  and  decided 
to  turn  to  the  Queen  of  England.  At  first  he  asked 
her  to  take  the  islands  under  her  protection,  and  later 
simply  to  annex  them.  But  the  English  were  cautious 
in  reply  to  this  request,  and  were  in  no  hurry  to  rescue 
the  semi-savage  monarch  from  his  difficulty.  Instead  of 
a  direct  answer,  they  fitted  out  a  special  expedition  in 
1860,  for  the  purpose  of  investigating  the  Fiji  islands, 
so  as  to  decide  whether  it  was  worth  while  to  annex 
them  to  the  British  possessions,  and  to  spend  money  in 
order  to  satisfy  the  American  creditors. 

In  the  meantime  the  American  government  con- 
tinued to  insist  on  payment,  and  retained  as  a  pledge 
several  of  the  best  points  in  its  actual  possession,  and, 
having  gained  an  insight  into  the  national  wealth,  in- 
creased the  former  $45,000  to  890,000  and  threatened  to 
increase  even  this  sum,  if  Cacabo  did  not  pay  it  at  once. 
Hard  pressed  on  all  sides,  poor  Cacabo,  who  was  un- 
acquainted with  the  European   methods  of  credit  trans- 


114  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

actions,  began,  with  the  advice  of  European  colonists,  to 
look  for  money  in  Melbourne,  asking  it  of  the  merchants, 
under  any  and  all  conditions,  even  if  he  had  to  yield  the 
whole  kingdom  to  private  individuals. 

Here,  in  Melbourne,  a  commercial  company  was  formed 
in  reply  to  Cacabo's  appeal.  This  stock  company,  which 
took  the  name  of  the  Polynesian  Company,  made  a  pact 
with  the  rulers  of  the  Fiji  Islands,  upon  conditions  which 
were  exceedingly  favourable  to  itself.  Taking  upon  itself 
the  debt  to  the  American  government  and  binding  itself  to 
pay  it  off  in  instalments,  the  company  received  for  it, 
according  to  the  first  agreement,  one  hundred  thousand, 
and  later  two  hundred  thousand,  acres  of  the  best  land  of 
its  own  choice,  the  freedom  for  all  times  from  all  taxes 
and  revenues  for  all  its  factories,  plants,  and  colonies,  and 
the  exclusive  right  for  a  considerable  time  to  estabhsh 
banks  of  issue,  with  the  privilege  of  an  unlimited  issue  of 
notes. 

From  the  time  of  this  pact,  which  was  conclusively 
settled  in  1868,  the  Fijians  were  confronted,  side  by  side 
with  their  local  government,  with  Cacabo  at  its  head,  by 
a  powerful  commercial  organization,  with  extensive  terri- 
torial possessions  on  all  the  islands,  and  with  a  decisive 
influence  in  the  government.  Heretofore  Cacabo's  govern- 
ment had  been  satisfied,  for  its  necessities,  with  those 
material  means  which  consisted  in  all  kinds  of  levies  in 
kind,  and  an  insignificant  revenue  from  customs  for  im- 
ported goods.  After  the  conclusion  of  the  pact  and  the 
foundation  of  the  powerful  Polynesian  Company,  its  finan- 
cial condition  was  changed.  A  considerable  part  of  the 
best  land  in  the  possessions  passed  over  to  the  company, 
and  so  the  taxes  were  diminished  ;  on  the  other  hand,  as 
we  know,  the  company  had  obtained  a  grant  of  a  free 
import  and  export  of  all  commodities,  by  which  the  reve- 
nue from  customs  was  also  reduced.  The  natives,  that  is 
ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  population,  had  always  been 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  115 

poor  contributors  to  the  customs  revenue,  as  they  hardly 
used  any  European  commodities,  except  a  few  stuffs  and 
metal  objects  ;  but  now,  since  by  the  grant  to  the  Poly- 
nesian Company  the  wealthier  Europeans  were  freed  from 
the  customs  revenue,  the  income  of  King  Cacabo  became 
completely  insignificant,  and  he  had  to  bethink  himself 
of  its  increase. 

And  so  Cacabo  began  to  take  counsel  with  his  white 
friends  as  to  how  he  might  avert  the  calamity,  and  these 
advised  him  to  introduce  the  first  direct  levy  in  the 
country,  and,  no  doubt  in  order  to  make  it  as  little  cum- 
bersome for  himself  as  possible,  it  was  to  be  in  the  shape 
of  a  monetary  contribution.  The  levy  was  established  in 
the  form  of  a  universal  or  head  tax,  to  the  amount  of  one 
pound  for  each  man  and  four  shillings  for  each  woman  on 
all  the  islands. 

As  we  have  said,  payment  in  kind  and  barter  even  now 
persist  in  the  Eiji  Islands.  Very  few  natives  possess  any 
money.  Their  wealth  consists  exclusively  in  all  kinds 
of  raw  products  and  flocks,  and  not  in  money.  But  the 
new  tax  demanded  that,  at  certain  stated  periods  of  time, 
money  be  paid,  which,  when  added  up,  amounted  to  a 
considerable  sum  for  a  head  of  a  native  family.  Here- 
tofore the  native  had  been  accustomed  to  no  individual 
imposts  in  favour  of  the  government,  except  personal 
obligations ;  all  the  levies  that  were  made  were  paid  by 
tba  Commune  or  the  village  to  which  he  belonged  from 
the  common  fields,  from  which  he  received  his  main 
income.  There  was  but  one  way  left  for  him,  —  to  seek 
money  from  the  white  colonists,  that  is,  to  turn  either  to 
the  trader,  or  the  planter,  who  had  what  he  needed,  — 
money. 

To  the  first  he  was  compelled  to  sell  his  products  at 
any  price,  since  the  collector  of  taxes  demanded  the 
money  by  a  given  time ;  or  he  had  to  borrow  money 
against    some    future   product,  a  circumstance  which,  of 


116  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  .. 

course,  the  trader  made  use  of  in  order  to  demand  un- 
scrupulous interest ;  or  he  had  to  turn  to  the  planter  and 
sell  him  his  labour,  that  is,  turn  labourer.  But  the  wages, 
no  doubt  on  account  of  the  great  simultaneous  supply, 
turned  out  to  be  very  low  in  the  Fiji  Islands,  according 
to  the  statements  of  the  present  administration,  at  about 
one  shilling  a  week,  or  two  pounds  twelve  shillings  a 
year ;  consequently,  in  order  merely  to  pay  the  tax  for 
himself,  to  say  nothing  of  his  family,  a  Fijian  was  com- 
pelled to  abandon  his  home,  his  family,  his  own  land,  and 
his  farm,  and,  often  setthng  far  away,  on  some  other 
island,  to  sell  himself  to  a  planter  for  at  least  six  months 
in  order  to  gain  the  one  pound  necessary  for  the  payment 
of  the  new  tax ;  but  for  the  payment  of  the  taxes  for  his 
whole  family  he  was  compelled  to  look  to  other  means. 

The  result  of  this  order  can  be  easily  imagined.  From 
the  150,000  subjects  Cacabo  collected  only  £6,000;  and 
so  there  begins  an  intensified  extortion  of  taxes,  which 
was  unknown  before,  and  a  series  of  compulsory  measures. 
The  local  administration,  incorruptible  before,  very  soon 
made  common  cause  with  the  planters,  who  began  to 
manage  the  country.  For  arrears  the  Fijians  were  taken 
to  court,  and  were  sentenced,  in  addition  to  the  payment 
of  the  costs,  to  incarceration  for  periods  of  not  less  than 
six  months.  The  role  of  these  prisons  were  played  by 
the  plantations  of  the  first  white  man  who  was  willing  to 
pay  the  tax  and  the  legal  cost  for  the  defendant.  In  this 
manner  the  whites  had  an  abundant  supply  of  cheap  labour 
in  any  quantity  desired.  At  first  this  compulsory  farming 
out  was  permitted  for  the  period  of  six  months,  but  later 
on  the  venal  judges  found  it  possible  to  send  a  man  to 
work  for  eighteen  months,  and  then  to  renew  their 
decree. 

Very  soon,  in  the  period  of  a  few  years,  the  picture  of 
the  economic  condition  of  Fiji  was  completely  changed. 
Whole    prosperous  districts  were   half  depleted   of  their 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  117 

population  and  extremely  impoverished.  The  whole  male 
population,  except  the  old  men  and  the  feeble,  were  work- 
ing away  from  their  homes,  on  the  plantations  of  the 
whites,  in  order  to  provide  themselves  with  the  money 
necessary  for  the  payment  of  the  tax  or  to  satisfy  the 
decree  of  the  court.  The  women  in  Fiji  do  hardly  any 
agricultural  labour,  and  so,  in  the  absence  of  their  hus- 
bands, the  farms  were  neglected  or  entirely  abandoned. 
In  a  few  years  half  the  population  of  Fiji  were  turned 
into  slaves  of  the  white  colonists. 

To  alleviate  their  condition,  the  Fijians  once  more 
turned  to  England.  A  new  petition,  covered  with  a  large 
number  of  signatures  of  the  most  prominent  persons  and 
chiefs,  and  asking  to  be  annexed  to  England,  made  its 
appearance  and  was  handed  to  the  British  consul.  By 
this  time  England,  thanks  to  its  learned  expeditions,  had 
had  time,  not  only  to  study,  but  also  to  measure  the 
islands,  and  in  due  manner  to  appreciate  the  natural 
wealth  of  this  beautiful  corner  of  the  globe.  On  account 
of  all  this  the  negotiations  were  this  time  crowned  with 
full  success,  and  in  1874  England,  to  the  great  dissatis- 
faction of  the  American  planters,  entered  into  possession 
of  the  Fiji  Islands,  by  annexing  them  to  its  colonies. 

Cacabo  died,  and  a  small  pension  was  decreed  to  his 
successors.  The  government  of  the  islands  was  entrusted 
to  Sir  Robinson,  the  governor  of  New  South  Wales.  In 
the  first  year  of  its  annexation  to  England,  Fiji  did  not 
have  its  administration,  but  was  under  the  influence  of 
Sir  Robinson,  who  appointed  an  administrator  for  it.  On 
taking  the  islands  into  its  hands,  the  English  government 
had  to  solve  a  difficult  problem,  —  to  satisfy  the  various 
expectations  from  it.  The  natives  naturally  expected 
first  of  all  the  abolition  of  the  hateful  head  tax ;  but  the 
white  colonists  (the  Americans)  looked  upon  the  British 
rule  partly  with  suspicion,  and  partly  (those  of  British 
origin)  expected  all  kinds  of  benefits,  for  example,  the 


118  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

recognition  of  their  rule  over  the  natives,  the  approval  of 
their  land-grabbing,  etc. 

The  English  government,  however,  proved  itself  to  be 
equal  to  the  task,  and  its  first  action  was  the  abolition 
for  ever  of  the  head  tax,  which  had  created  the  slavery 
of  the  natives  to  the  advantage  of  a  few  colonists.  But 
here  Sir  Eobiuson  was  confronted  with  a  difficult  dilemma. 
It  became  necessary  to  do  away  with  the  head  tax,  to 
save  themselves  from  which  the  Fijians  had  turned  to  the 
Enghsh  government ;  at  the  same  time,  according  to  the 
rule  of  the  English  colonial  policy,  the  colonies  were  to 
support  themselves,  that  is,  it  was  necessary  to  find  local 
means  to  meet  the  expenditures  of  the  administration. 
But,  with  the  abolition  of  the  head  tax,  all  the  income  of 
Fiji  (from  the  customs  dues)  did  not  exceed  .£6,000, 
whereas  the  expenditures  of  the  administration  demanded 
at  the  least  £70,000  a  year.  And  so  Robinson,  after 
having  abolished  the  money  tax,  invented  the  labour  tax,- 
which  the  Fijians  had  to  pay  in  work,  but  this  did  not 
net  the  X  70,000  necessary  for  the  support  of  Robinson 
and  his  assistants. 

The  thing  did  not  go  until  the  appointment  of  a  new 
governor,  Gordon,  who,  to  get  out  of  the  inhabitants  the 
money  necessary  for  his  support  and  for  that  of  his  assist- 
ants, took  it  into  his  head  that  he  would  not  demand  any 
money  until  a  sufficient  amount  of  it  should  be  in  circula- 
tion in  the  islands,  but  that  he  would  take  the  products 
from  the  natives  and  would  sell  them  himself. 

This  tragic  episode  from  the  life  of  the  Fijians  is  the 
clearest  and  best  indication  of  what  money  is  and  in  what 
its  significance  lies.  Here  everything  was  expressed :  the 
first  fundamental  condition  of  the  enslavement  —  the  can- 
non, menaces,  murder,  and  seizure  of  land,  and  the  chief 
means  —  money,  which  has  taken  the  place  of  all  the 
other  means.  What  in  the  historical  sketch  of  the 
economic  development  of  the  nations  has  to  be  followed 


WHAT    SHALL    WL    DO    THEN?  119 

out  in  the  course  of  centuries,  is  here,  where  the  forms  of 
the  monetary  violence  are  worked  out  completely,  concen- 
trated in  one  decade.  The  drama  begins  by  this,  that  the 
American  government  sends  its  ships  with  loaded  cannon 
to  the  shores  of  the  islands,  whose  inhabitants  it  wants  to 
enslave.  'The  pretext  of  this  threat  is  money,  but  the 
beginning  of  the  drama  is  with  the  cannon  which  are 
directed  upon  all  the  inhabitants,  —  women,  children,  old 
men,  —  people  who  are  not  guilty  of  anything,  and  this 
phenomenon  is  now  repeated  in  America,  in  China, 
in  Central  Asia.  The  beginning  of  the  drama  is  this, 
"  Your  money  or  your  life,"  which  is  repeated  in  the 
history  of  all  the  conquests  of  all  the  nations  ;  i^45,000 
and  then  -190,000,  or  slaughter.  But  there  are  no 
$90,000.  The  Americans  have  them.  And  so  the  second 
act  of  the  drama  begins :  it  is  necessary  to  put  off,  to 
exchange  the  bloody,  terrible,  concentrated  slaughter 
for  less  noticeable,  though  more  prolonged,  sufferings. 
And  the  httle  nation  by  its  representative  seeks  a  means 
for  exchanging  slaughter  for  enslavement  to  money.  It 
borrows  money,  and  the  forms  of  the  enslavement  of  men 
by  means  of  money  are  worked  out. 

This  method  begins  at  once  to  act  like  a  disciplined 
army,  and  in  five  years  the  work  is  done  :  the  people  have 
lost  not  only  the  right  to  use  their  land,  but  also  their 
property  and  their  freedom  ;  the  men  are  slaves. 

The  third  act  begins.  The  situation  is  exceedingly 
hard,  and  the  unfortunate  people  hear  the  rumour  that  it 
is  possible  to  change  masters  and  go  into  another  slavery. 
(Of  liberation  from  the  slavery  which  the  money  imposes 
there  is  no  longer  a  thought.)  And  the  little  nation  in- 
vites another  master,  to  whom  it  abandons  itself  with  the 
request  that  it  improve  its  condition.  The  English  come 
and  see  that  the  possession  of  these  islands  makes  it  pos- 
sible for  them  to  feed  some  drones  who  have  been  breed- 
ing in  too  great  a  quantity,  and  the  English  government 


120  WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

takes  these  islands  with  their  inhabitants,  but  not  in  the 
form  of  personal  slaves :  it  does  not  even  take  the  land 
and  does  not  distribute  it  to  its  assistants.  Those  old 
methods  are  not  needed  now.  All  that  is  necessary  is 
that  they  should  pay  a  tribute,  one  that  will,  on  the  one 
hand,  be  sufficiently  large  to  keep  the  labourers*  in  perpet- 
ual slavery,  and,  on  the  other,  will  feed  well  the  multitude 
of  drones. 

The  inhabitants  have  to  pay  .£70,000.  This  is  the 
fundamental  condition  under  which  England  agrees  to 
ransom  the  Fijians  from  American  slavery,  and  this  is 
at  the  same  time  the  one  necessary  thing  for  the  complete 
enslavement  of  the  inhabitants.  But  it  turns  out  that 
the  Fijians  are  not  able  under  their  present  condition  to 
pay  the  .£70,000.  The  demand  is  excessive.  The  Eng- 
lish for  a  time  modify  the  demand  and  take  a  part  in 
kind,  in  order,  in  proper  time,  when  the  money  shall  be 
in  circulation,  to  increase  the  demand  to  its  full  norm. 

England  does  not  act  like  the  former  company,  whose 
procedure  may  be  compared  with  the  first  arrival  of 
savage  conquerors  in  the  country  of  savage  inhabitants, 
when  they  have  but  the  one  thought  of  carrying  off  as 
much  as  possible  and  going  away  again ;  England  acts 
like  a  more  far-sighted  enslaver :  it  does  not  all  at  once 
kill  the  hen  with  the  golden  eggs,  but  does  not  mind  feed- 
ing her,  since  it  knows  that  she  is  a  good  layer.  At  first 
it  slackens  the  reins  for  its  own  benefit,  in  order  later  to 
pull  them  tight  for  all  time  and  to  bring  the  Fijians 
to  that  condition  of  monetary  slavery  in  which  all  the 
European  and  civilized  nations  are,  and  from  which  no 
liberation  is  in  sight. 

Money  is  a  harmless  medium  of  exchange,  but  certainly 
not  when  the  shores  of  the  country  are  lined  with  loaded 
cannon,  which  are  directed  upon  the  inhabitants.  The 
moment  money  is  levied  by  force,  under  the  protection 
of  guns,  there  is  inevitably  repeated  what  took  place  on 


WHAT    SHALL   WE    DO    THEN  ?  121 

the  Fiji  Islands,  and  what  has  taken  place  everywhere 
and  at  all  times,  —  in  the  case  of  the  princes  and  the 
Dr^vlyans,  and  of  all  the  governments  and  their  nations. 
People  who  have  the  power  to  employ  force  against  others 
will  do  so  by  means  of  the  extortion  of  a  sum  of  money, 
which  compels  the  people  on  whom  the  extortion  is  prac- 
tised to  become  the  slaves  of  the  extortioners. 

Besides,  there  will  take  place  what  took  place  in  the 
case  of  the  English  and  the  Fijians,  namely,  that  the  ex- 
tortioners will,  in  their  demand  for  money,  be  more  likely 
to  transcend  the  limit  at  which  the  sum  of  money  de- 
manded has  been  set,  in  order  to  hasten  the  enslavement, 
than  not  to  come  up  to  it.  They  will  reach  the  limit 
without  crossing  it  only  in  case  of  a  moral  sentiment,  and 
they  will  always  reach  it,  even  though  the  sentiment  may 
exist,  if  they  are  in  want.  But  the  governments  will 
always  cross  this  limit,  in  the  first  place,  because,  as  we 
know,  the  governments  themselves  are  in  extreme  need, 
due  to  the  wars  and  to  the  necessity  of  offering  stipends 
to  their  accomplices. 

All  the  governments  are  always  in  in  solvable  debt,  and, 
even  if  they  wished  to  do  otherwise,  cannot  help  but  carry 
out  the  rule  promulgated  by  a  Russian  statesman  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  that  it  is  necessary  to  shear  the  peas- 
ant aod  not  give  him  a  chance  to  grow  his  hair.  All  the 
governments  are  in  insolvable  debt,  and  this  debt  in  its 
totality  (not  counting  its  accidental  decrease  -in  England 
and  in  America)  grows  from  year  to  year  in  a  terrifying 
progression.  Even  so  grow  the  budgets,  that  is,  the  ne- 
cessity of  fighting  other  extortioners  and  giving  stipends 
in  money  and  laud  to  the  assistants  in  the  extortion, 
and  in  a  similar  way  does  the  land  value  grow. 

The  wages  do  not  grow  according  to  the  law  of  rents, 
but  because  there  exists  a  state  and  land  tribute,  the  pur- 
pose of  which  is  to  take  from  the  people  all  their  surplus, 
so  that  for  the  fulfilment  of  this  demand  they  may  sell 


122  WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

their  labour,  because  the  exploitation  of  this  labour  is  the 
aim  of  the  imposition  of  a  tribute.  Now  the  exploitation 
of  this  labour  is  possible  only  when  a  greater  aggregate 
amount  of  money  is  demanded  than  the  labourers  can 
give  without  depriving  themselves  of  their  means  of  sup- 
port. The  raising  of  the  scale  of  wages  would  destroy 
the  possibility  of  slavery,  and  so  it  can  never  be  raised  so 
long  as  there  is  any  violence.  It  is  this  simple  and  intel- 
ligible action  of  one  set  of  men  upon  another  that  the 
economists  call  an  iron  law  ;  but  the  instrument  with 
which  this  action  is  produced  they  call  a  medium  of 
exchange. 

Money,  this  harmless  medium  of  exchange,  is  needed 
by  men  in  their  relations  among  themselves.  Where 
there  does  not  exist  a  violent  demand  for  a  monetary 
tribute,  there  has  never  been  any  money  in  its  modern 
significance,  and  there  could  have  been  none,  but  it  has 
always  been,  and  it  always  wiU  be,  as  it  is  with  the 
Fijians,  the  Kirgizes,  the  Africans,  the  Phoenicians,  and 
in  general  with  people  who  do  not  pay  any  taxes :  there 
we  have  the  direct  exchange  of  objects  for  objects,  and 
there  the  accidental  standards  of  values  are  sheep,  furs, 
hides,  shells.  A  certain  kind  of  money  becomes  current 
among  people  only  when  it  is  forcibly  demanded  of  all. 
Only  then  does  it  become  a  necessity  for  each  person  in 
order  that  he  may  ransom  himself  from  violence,  and 
only  then  does  it  receive  a  constant  exchange  value. 
What,  then,  receives  a  value  is  not  what  is  more  con- 
venient for  exchange,  but  what  is  demanded  by  the 
government.  If  gold  is  demanded,  gold  will  have  a  value  ; 
if  knuckle-bones  are  demanded,  knuckle-bones  will  have 
a  value.  If  this  were  not  so,  why  has  the  issue  of  this 
medium  of  exchange  always  formed  the  prerogative  of 
the  government  ? 

People  —  let  us  say  the  Fijians  —  have  established 
their  medium  of  exchange  ;  very  well,  let  them  exchange 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  123 

things  in  any  way  they  please,  and  you  people  who  have 
power,  that  is  the  means  for  violence,  do  not  meddle  with 
this  exchange.  But  what  you  do  is  to  coin  this  money, 
prohibiting  others  from  coining  the  like  :  then,  as  is  the 
case  with  us,  you  print  a  lot  of  bills,  representing  on  them 
the  portraits  of  kings ;  you  sign  them  with  special  signa- 
tures ;  determine  penalties  for  the  counterfeiting  of  this 
money ;  distribute  them  among  your  assistants,  and  de- 
mand, in  the  form  of  state  and  land  taxes,  just  such  coins 
and  scraps  of  paper,  with  precisely  the  same  signatures, 
and  so  many  of  them  that  the  labourer  has  to  give  up  his 
whole  labour  in  order  to  obtain  these  scraps  of  paper  and 
these  coins,  and  you  assure  us  that  this  money  is  neces- 
sary as  a  medium  of  exchange. 

All  men  are  free,  and  one  set  of  men  does  not  oppress 
another,  does  not  keep  men  in  slavery  ;  all  there  is,  is 
money  in  society  and  an  iron  law,  according  to  which 
rents  rise  and  wages  decrease  to  a  minimum  !  The  fact 
that  half  (more  than  half)  the  Eussian  peasants  sell  them- 
selves to  work  for  lauded  proprietors  and  manufacturers, 
for  the  sake  of  their  direct  and  indirect  and  land  taxes, 
does  not  at  all  mean  what  it  obviously  means,  namely, 
that  the  levying  of  head  taxes  and  of  indirect  and  land 
taxes,  which  are  paid  to  the  government  and  to  its  assist- 
ants, the  proprietors,  in  money,  compels  the  labourer  to  be 
in  the  slavery  of  him  who  levies  the  money,  but  it  means 
that  there  is  money  —  the  medium  of  exchange  —  and 
an  iron  law ! 

When  the  serfs  were  not  free,  I  was  able  to  compel 
Vauka  to  do  all  kinds  of  work,  and  if  Vanka  refused, 
I  sent  him  to  the  rural  officer,  and  the  officer  flogged  him 
until  he  submitted.  However,  if  I  made  Vanka  work 
above  his  strength,  without  giving  him  land  or  food, 
the  matter  reached  the  ears  of  the  authorities,  and  I  had 
to  be  responsible  for  it.  Now  men  are  free,  but  I  can 
compel  Vanka,  Siddrka,  or  Petriishka  to  do  any  kind  of 


124  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

work,  and  if  he  refuses  I  will  not  give  him  any  money 
for  his  taxes,  and  they  will  flog  him  until  he  submits ; 
besides,  I  can  compel  a  German,  and  a  Frenchman,  and  a 
Chinaman,  and  a  Hindoo  to  work  for  me,  by  not  giving 
him  money,  in  case  of  his  insubmission,  with  which  to 
rent  laud  or  buy  bread,  because  he  has  neither  land  nor 
bread.  And  if  I  make  him  work  without  food,  above  his 
streugtb,  if  I  kill  him  with  work,  no  oue  will  say  a  word 
to  me ;  but  if,  in  addition,  I  have  read  books  on  political 
economy,  I  can  be  firmly  convinced  that  all  men  are  free, 
and  that  money  does  not  create  any  slavery. 

The  peasants  have  known  for  a  long  time  that  it  is 
possible  to  cause  more  pain  with  a  rouble  than  with  a 
club ;  it  is  only  political  economy  that  does  not  want 
to  know  it.  To  say  that  money  does  not  cause  any  en- 
slavement, is  the  same  as  if  half  a  century  ago  we  should 
have  said  that  the  serf  law  does  not  produce  any  enslave- 
ment. Political  economists  say  that,  although  in  conse- 
quence of  the  possession  of  money  one  man  may  enslave 
another,  money  is  a  harmless  medium  of  exchange.  Why, 
then,  could  it  not  have  been  said  half  a  century  ago  that, 
although  it  is  possible  by  means  of  the  serf  law  to  enslave 
a  man,  the  serf  law  is  not  a  means  for  enslavement,  but  a 
harmless  medium  of  mutual  services  ?  Some  give  their 
rude  work,  others  attend  to  the  physical  and  mental  wel- 
fare of  the  slaves  and  to  the  distribution  of  the  work.  It 
seems  to  me  they  used  to  talk  that  way. 


XIX. 

If  this  imaginary  science  —  political  economy  —  did 
not  busy  itself  with  what  all  the  juridical  sciences  busy 
themselves  with,  —  with  an  apology  for  violence,  it  could 
not  help  but  see  that  strange  phenomenon  that  the  distri- 
bution of  wealth  and  the  despoliation  of  land  and  capital 
by  some,  and  the  enslavement  of  one  set  of  men  by  an- 
other, are  all  dependent  on  money,  and  that  only  by  means 
of  money  one  set  of  men  now  exploits  the  labour  of 
others,  that  is,  enslaves  others. 

I  repeat :  a  man  who  has  money  can  buy  up  all  the 
bread  and  starve  another  and  for  the  bread  enslave  him 
completely.  Indeed,  so  it  is  done  on  a  large  scale  in  our 
own  sight.  One  would  think  that  it  would  be  necessary  to 
look  for  a  connection  between  these  phenomena  of  enslave- 
ment and  money,  but  science  assures  us  with  absolute 
confidence  that  money  has  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
enslavement  of  men. 

Science  says :  Money  is  a  commodity  like  any  other 
which  has  the  value  of  its  production,  with  this  difference, 
that  this  commodity  is  chosen  as  the  most  convenient 
medium  of  exchange  for  the  establishment  of  prices,  for 
storing,  and  for  making  payments :  one  man  makes  boots, 
another  grows  grain,  a  third  raises  sheep,  and,  to  be  able 
more  conveniently  to  exchange  their  products,  they  intro- 
duce money,  which  represents  a  corresponding  share  of 
labour,  and  by  means  of  it  exchange  soles  for  a  brisket 
of  mutton  and  ten  pounds  of  flour. 

The  men  of  this  imaginary  science  are  very  fond  of 

representing  to  themselves  such  a  state  of    affairs ;    but 

125 


126  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

such  a  state  of  affairs  has  never  existed  in  this  world. 
Such  a  representation  of  society  is  the  same  as  the  rep- 
resentation of  the  primeval,  uncorrupted,  perfect  human 
society,  which  former  philosophers  used  to  make  for 
themselves.  There  has  never  existed  such  a  state.  In 
all  human  societies,  where  there  has  been  any  money  as 
such,  there  has  always  existed  violence,  which  is  exerted 
by  the  strong  and  the  armed  over  the  weak  and  the 
unarmed ;  but  where  there  has  been  violence,  the  stand- 
ards of  values  —  money,  no  matter  what  it  may  have 
been,  —  cattle,  furs,  hides,  metals,  —  had  inevitably  to 
lose  their  significance  and  to  acquire  the  meaning  of 
ransom  from  violence. 

Money  has  unquestionably  the  harmless  properties 
which  science  mentions,  but  it  would  in  reahty  have 
these  properties  in  a  society  where  the  violence  of  one 
man  over  another  has  not  made  its  appearance,  —  in  an 
ideal  society ;  but  in  such  a  society  there  would  be  no 
money  as  such,  as  a  common  standard  of  values,  as  it  has 
not  existed,  and  cannot  exist,  in  any  society  which  has  not 
been  subjected  to  the  general  political  violence.  Its  chief 
significance  is  not  to  serve  as  a  medium  of  exchange,  but 
to  serve  for  the  purpose  of  violence.  Where  there  is 
violence,  money  cannot  serve  as  a  regular  medium  of 
exchange,  because  it  cannot  be  a  standard  of  values.  It 
cannot  be  a  standard  of  values,  because,  as  soon  as  one 
man  in  society  can  take  away  from  another  the  products 
of  his  labour,  this  standard  is  at  once  impaired. 

If  horses  and  cows,  raised  by  farmers  and  others,  are 
taken  by  force  away  from  farmers  and  brought  together 
to  the  market,  it  is  evident  that  the  value  of  the  horses 
and  cows  at  tliis  market  will  no  longer  correspond  to  the 
labour  of  raising  the  stock,  and  the  values  of  all  other 
articles  will  change  in  conformity  with  this  change,  and 
money  will  not  determine  the  values  of  these  articles. 
Besides,  if  it  is  possible  by  force  to  acquire  a  cow,  a  horse, 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  127 

or  a  house,  it  is  possible  by  means  of  this  same  violence 
to  acquire  the  money  itself,  and  with  this  money  to  ac- 
quire all  the  other  products.  But  if  the  money  itself  is 
acquired  through  violence  and  is  used  for  the  purchase  of 
articles,  the  money  loses  every  semblance  of  a  medium 
of  exchange.  The  oppressor,  who  has  taken  away  the 
money  and  gives  it  for  the  products  of  labour,  does  not 
exchange,  but  by  means  of  the  money  takes  all  he  needs. 

But  even  if  there  existed  such  an  imaginary,  impossible 
society,  in  which,  without  the  general  political  violence 
being  exerted  over  men,  money  —  silver  or  gold  —  had 
the  significance  of  a  standard  of  values,  it  would,  at  the 
appearance  of  violence,  immediately  lose  its  significance 
even  in  such  a  society.  The  oppressor  makes  his  appear- 
ance in  such  a  society  in  the  form  of  a  conqueror.  This 
oppressor,  let  us  assume,  seizes  the  cows,  and  the  horses, 
and  the  houses  of  the  inhabitants ;  but  it  is  not  conve- 
nient for  liim  to  possess  all  this,  and  so  it  naturally  occurs 
to  him  to  seize  that  from  these  people  which  among  them 
forms  all  kinds  of  values  and  is  exchanged  for  all  kinds 
of  articles,  namely,  money.  Immediately  the  money,  as 
a  standard  of  values,  ceases  to  have  any  place  in  such  a 
society,  because  the  standard  of  the  value  of  all  articles 
will  always  depend  on  the  arbitrary  will  of  the  oppressor. 
The  article  which  the  oppressor  will  need  most  and  for 
which  he  will  give  most  money,  will  receive  a  greater 
value,  and  vice  versa.  Thus  in  a  society  which  is  sub- 
jected to  violence,  the  money  at  once  receives  the  one 
predominant  meaning  of  a  medium  of  oppression  for  the 
oppressor,  and  will  retain  its  significance  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  for  the  oppressed  only  to  such  an  extent  and  in 
such  a  relation  as  is  convenient  for  the  oppressor. 

Let  us  imagine  the  matter  in  a  small  circle.  The  serfs 
furnish  the  proprietor  with  cloth,  chickens,  sheep,  and  day 
labour.  The  farmer  substitutes  money  for  the  dues  in 
kind,  and  determines  the  price  of  the  various  articles  of 


128       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ? 

the  dues.  He  who  has  no  cloth,  bread,  cattle,  or  work 
hands,  can  offer  a  certain  sum  of  money.  It  is  evident 
that  in  the  society  of  the  peasants  belonging  to  this  pro- 
prietor, the  valuation  of  the  articles  will  always  depend 
on  the  arbitrary  will  of  the  proprietor.  The  proprietor 
makes  use  of  the  articles  collected,  and  some  he  needs 
more,  others  less,  and  in  accordance  with  this  he  deter- 
mines a  higher  or  lower  price  for  this  or  that  article.  It 
is  evident  that  nothiug  but  the  proprietor's  will  or  his 
needs  decides  the  prices  of  these  articles  among  the 
payers. 

If  the  proprietor  needs  grain,  he  puts  a  high  price  on 
the  right  of  not  furnishing  a  given  amount  of  grain,  and  a 
low  price  on  the  right  of  not  furnishing  cloth,  cattle,  or 
day  labour ;  and  so  those  who  have  no  grain  will  sell  to 
others  their  labour,  their  cloth,  and  their  cattle,  in  order 
to  buy  the  grain  which  they  have  to  furnish  to  the 
proprietor. 

If  the  proprietor  takes  it  into  his  head  to  demand  all 
the  obligations  in  money  payments,  the  price  of  the  arti- 
cles will  again  not  depend  on  the  value  of  the  labour, 
but,  in  the  first  place,  on  tlie  amount  of  money  which  the 
proprietor  will  demand,  and,  in  the  second,  on  the  articles 
produced  by  the  peasants,  which  the  proprietor  needs 
most,  and  so  on  this,  for  what  articles  he  pays  more  and 
and  for  what  less.  The  levy  of  money,  which  the  pro- 
prietor makes  on  the  peasants,  would  not  have  an  influ- 
ence on  the  value  of  articles  among  the  peasants,  unless, 
in  the  first  place,  the  peasants  of  this  proprietor  lived 
separately  from  other  people  and  had  no  other  relations 
except  those  between  themselves  and  the  proprietor,  and, 
in  the  second,  the  proprietor  did  not  use  the  money  for 
the  purchase  of  articles  from  his  own  village,  but  else- 
where. Only  under  these  two  conditions  would  the  value 
of  the  articles,  though  nominally  changed,  remain  rela- 
tively true,  and  the  money  would  have  the  significance 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  129 

of  a  standard  of  values  and  of  exchange ;  but  if  the  peas- 
ants have  economic  relations  with  the  surrounding  inhab- 
itants, the  greater  or  lesser  demand  for  money  made  by  the 
proprietor  will,  in  the  first  place,  affect  the  greater  or  lesser 
value  of  their  articles  in  relation  to  their  neighbours.  (If 
less  money  is  demanded  of  their  neighbours  than  of  them, 
their  products  will  be  sold  more  cheaply  than  the  products 
of  their  neiglibours,  and  vice  versa.)  And,  in  the  second 
place,  the  levy  of  mouey  made  by  the  proprietor  on  the 
peasants  could  have  no  influence  on  the  value  of  the  prod- 
ucts unless  the  proprietor  did  not  use  the  money  collected 
for  the  purchase  of  products  from  his  peasants.  But  if  he 
uses  his  money  for  the  purchase  of  his  peasants'  products, 
it  is  evident  that  even  the  relation  of  prices  of  various 
articles  among  the  peasants  themselves  will  constantly 
change  in  proportion  as  the  proprietor  purchases  this  or 
that  article. 

Let  us  suppose  that  one  proprietor  has  set  the  peasant 
dues  very  high,  and  his  neighbour  has  put  them  low :  it 
is  evident  that  in  the  sphere  of  the  first  proprietor  all  the 
articles  will  be  cheaper  than  in  the  sphere  of  the  second, 
and  that  the  prices  in  either  sphere  will  depend  only  on 
the  raising  or  the  lowering  of  the  dues.  Such  is  one  of 
the  influences  of  violence  on  prices. 

Another  influence,  which  results  from  the  first,  will 
consist  in  the  relative  values  of  all  articles.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  one  proprietor  likes  horses  and  pays  well  for 
them ;  another  is  fond  of  towels  and  pays  well  for  them. 
It  is  evident  that  in  the  possessions  of  the  two  proprietors 
horses  and  towels  will  be  high,  and  the  price  for  these 
articles  will  not  be  in  proportion  to  the  prices  of  cows 
and  of  grain.  To-morrow  the  one  who  is  fond  of  towels 
dies,  and  his  successor  is  fond  of  chickens :  it  is  evident 
that  the  price  of  the  towels  will  go  down,  and  that  of  the 
chickens  will  rise. 

Where  in  society  there  exists  the  oppression  of  one 


130  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

man  by  another,  the  significance  of  money  as  a  standard 
of  values  is  immediately  subjected  to  the  arbitrary  will  of 
the  oppressor,  and  its  significance  as  a  medium  of  ex- 
change of  products  of  labour  gives  way  to  its  significance 
as  a  most  convenient  medium  for  exploiting  the  labour  of 
others.  The  oppressor  needs  the  money  not  for  exchange, 
nor  for  the  establishment  of  standards  of  values,  —  he 
establishes  them  himself,  —  but  only  as  a  convenience  of 
oppression,  which  consists  in  this,  that  the  money  is  put 
away  for  safe-keeping,  and  that  with  money  it  is  much 
easier  to  keep  in  subjection  the  greatest  number  of  men.  It 
is  inconvenient  to  take  away  all  the  cattle,  in  order  that 
one  may  all  the  time  have  horses,  and  cows,  and  sheep, 
as  many  as  one  may  need  of  them,  because  one  has  to 
feed  them ;  the  same  is  true  of  the  grain,  —  it  may  get 
spoiled.  The  same  is  true  of  the  labour,  the  corvee :  at 
one  time  a  thousand  labourers  are  wanted,  and  at  another 
not  even  one.  The  money,  which  is  demanded  of  him 
who  does  not  have  it,  makes  it  possible  to  get  rid  of  all 
these  inconveniences  and  always  to  have  everything 
which  is  needed,  and  it  is  for  this  alone  that  the  oppressor 
needs  it.  Besides,  the  oppressor  needs  the  money  for 
this,  that  his  right  to  exploit  the  labour  of  others  may 
not  be  limited  to  certain  persons,  but  may  extend  over  all 
men  who  are  in  need  of  money.  When  there  was  no 
money,  the  proprietor  could  exploit  the  labour  of  his 
serfs  alone ;  but  when  two  of  them  agreed  to  take  from 
their  serfs  money,  which  they  did  not  have,  they  both 
began  indiscriminately  to  exploit  all  the  forces  in  the 
two  estates. 

And  so  the  oppressor  finds  it  more  convenient  to  make 
his  demands  for  other  people's  labour  in  the  shape  of 
money,  and  for  this  alone  does  the  oppressor  need  the 
money.  But  for  the  oppressed  man,  for  him  who  is 
deprived  of  his  labour,  the  money  is  not  necessary  for 
exchange,  —  he    exchanges    without    money,    as    all    the 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       131 

nations  without  governments  have  exchanged ;  nor  for 
determining  the  standards  of  values,  because  this  determi- 
nation takes  place  in  spite  of  him ;  nor  for  safe-keeping, 
because  he  who  is  deprived  of  the  products  of  his  labour 
cannot  save ;  nor  for  payments,  because  the  one  who  is 
oppressed  will  have  to  pay  more  than  he  receives,  or, 
if  he  has  to  receive,  the  payments  will  not  be  made 
to  him  in  money,  but  in  commodities,  —  if  the  labourer 
receives  the  payment  for  his  work  directly  from  his 
master's  shop,  —  and  the  same  is  true  if  for  his  whole 
earnings  he  purchases  articles  of  prime  necessity  in  free 
shops.  Money  is  demanded  of  him,  and  he  is  told  that, 
if  he  does  not  pay  it,  he  will  get  no  land,  no  grain,  or  his 
cow,  his  house,  will  be  taken  from  him,  and  he  will  be 
made  to  work  out  or  will  be  put  in  prison.  From  this 
he  can  free  himself  only  by  selling  the  products  of  his 
labour  and  his  labour  itself  at  prices  which  are  not  estab- 
lished by  a  regular  exchange,  but  by  the  power  which 
demands  the  money  of  him. 

With  these  conditions  that  result  from  the  influence  of 
tributes  or  taxes  on  the  values,  which  are  repeated  at  all 
times  and  everywhere,  with  the  proprietor  on  a  small 
scale,  and  in  the  government  on  a  large  scale ;  with  these 
conditions,  where  the  causes  of  the  changes  of  values  are 
as  evident,  as  it  is  evident  to  him  who  looks  back  of  the 
curtain  why  and  how  the  marionette  raises  or  lets  down 
a  foot ;  with  these  conditions,  to  speak  of  money  as  repre- 
senting a  medium  of  exchange  and  a  standard  of  values 
is,  to  say  the  least,  astonishing. 


XX. 

Every  enslavement  of  one  man  by  another  is  based  on 
nothing  but  this,  that  one  man  may  deprive  another 
of  life  and,  without  abandoning  this  menacing  state,  may 
compel  another  to  do  his  will. 

It  may  unmistakably  be  said  that,  if  there  is  an 
enslavement  of  a  man,  that  is,  the  fulfilment  by  one  man 
against  his  will,  at  the  will  of  another,  of  certain  acts 
which  are  undesirable  to  him,  the  cause  of  it  is  only  the 
violence  which  has  for  its  foundation  the  menace  of 
depriving  him  of  life.  If  a  man  gives  all  his  labour 
to  others,  gets  insufficient  nourishment,  allows  his  little 
children  to  do  hard  work,  leaves  his  land,  and  devotes 
his  whole  life  to  hateful  and  to  him  useless  labour,  as 
actually  takes  place  in  our  sight,  in  our  society  (which 
we  call  cultured  only  because  we  live  in  it),  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  he  does  so  only  in  consequence  of  the  fact 
that  for  the  non-fulfilment  of  all  this  he  is  threatened 
with  the  loss  of  his  life.  And  so,  in  our  cultured  society, 
where  the  majority  of  people  under  terrible  privations 
perform  hateful  and  to  them  useless  labour,  the  majority 
of  men  are  in  a  state  of  enslavement,  which  is  based  on 
the  menace  of  depriving  them  of  their  lives.  Wherein 
does  this  enslavement  consist  ?  And  in  what  does  the 
menace  of  depriving  them  of  their  lives  lie  ? 

In  ancient  times  the  manner  of  enslavement  and  the 

threat  of   depriving    men  of    their    lives  were  manifest : 

they  employed  a  primitive  method  for  enslaving  people, 

which  consisted  in  the  direct  threat  of  killing  by  means 

132 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  133 

of  the  sword.  The  man  in  arms  said  to  him  who  was 
unarmed :  "  I  can  kill  you,  as  you  saw  me  kiU  your 
brother;  but  I  do  not  want  to  do  so, —  I  spare  you,  most 
of  all,  because  it  is  more  advantageous  for  me  and  for  you 
if  you  work  for  me,  than  if  you  are  killed.  And  so,  do 
everything  which  I  command  you,  for  if  you  refuse  I  will 
kill  you."  And  the  unarmed  man  submitted  to  him  who 
was  armed,  and  did  everything  commanded  by  him.  The 
uuarmed  man  worked,  the  one  in  arms  threatened.  That 
was  that  personal  slavery  which  is  the  first  to  appear 
among  all  the  natious,  and  even  now  may  be  met  with 
among  primitive  nations. 

This  method  of  enslavement  is  the  first  to  make  its 
appearance,  but  witli  the  greater  complexity  of  life  this 
method  is  modified.  In  proportion  as  life  becomes  more 
complicated,  this  method  presents  great  inconveniences  to 
the  oppressor.  To  exploit  the  labour  of  the  feeble,  the 
oppressor  is  obhged  to  feed  and  clothe  them,  that  is,  to 
maintain  them  in  such  a  way  that  they  may  be  able  to 
do  work,  and  thus  the  number  of  the  enslaved  is  lim- 
ited ;  besides,  this  method  compels  the  oppressor  all  the 
time  to  stand  over  the  enslaved  with  the  threat  of  kill- 
ing them.  And  so  a  second  method  of  enslavement 
is  worked  out. 

Five  thousand  years  ago,  as  is  noted  down  in  the 
Bible,  this  new,  more  convenient,  and  broader  method 
was  worked  out  by  Joseph  the  Fair.  This  method  is 
the  same  which  in  modern  times  is  used  for  the  taming 
of  unruly  horses  and  wild  beasts  in  menageries.  This 
method  is  starvation. 

This  is  the  way  it  is  described  in  the  Bible,  in  the 
Book  of  Genesis,  Chapter  XLI. : 

48.  And  he  gathered  up  all  the  food  of  the  seven  years 
which  were  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  laid  up  the  food  in 
the  cities  :  the  food  of  the  field  which  was  round  about 
every  city,  laid  he  up  in  the  same. 


134  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

49.  And  Joseph  gathered  corn  as  the  sand  of  the  sea, 
very  much,  until  he  left  numbering ;  for  it  was  without 
number. 

53.  And  the  seven  years  of  plenteousness  that  was  in 
the  land  of  Egypt,  were  ended. 

54.  And  the  seven  years  of  dearth  began  to  come, 
according  as  Joseph  had  said :  and  the  dearth  was  in 
all  lands ;  but  in  all  the  land  of  Egypt  there  was 
bread. 

55.  And  when  all  the  land  of  Egypt  was  famished, 
the  people  cried  to  Pharaoh  for  bread  :  and  Pharaoh  said 
unto  all  the  Egyptians,  Go  unto  Joseph ;  what  he  saith 
to  you,  do. 

56.  And  the  famine  was  over  all  the  face  of  the  earth : 
and  Joseph  opened  all  the  store-houses,  and  sold  unto 
the  Egyptians  ,  and  the  famine  waxed  sore  in  the  land 
of  Egypt. 

57.  And  all  countries  came  into  Egypt  to  Joseph  for 
to  buy  corn ;  because  that  the  famine  was  so  sore  in  all 
lands. 

Making  use  of  the  right  of  the  primitive  method  of 
enslaving  people  with  the  threat  of  the  sword,  Joseph 
collected  the  corn  in  the  good  years,  in  expectation  of 
the  bad  years,  which  generally  follow  after  the  good,  a 
fact  which  all  people  know  without  Pharaoh's  dreams, 
and  by  this  means  —  by  hunger  —  he  enslaved  the 
Egyptians  and  all  the  other  inhabitants  of  the  surround- 
ing countries  more  powerfully  and  more  conveniently  for 
Pharaoh.  But  when  the  people  began  to  suffer  from 
hunger,  he  so  arranged  it  that  the  people  would  for  ever 
be  in  his  power,  —  through  hunger.  This  is  described  in 
Chapter  XLVII. : 

13.  And  there  was  no  bread  in  all  the  land  ;  for  the 
famine  was  very  sore,  so  that  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  all 
the  land  of  Canaan,  fainted  by  reason  of  the  famine. 

14.  And  Joseph  gathered  up  all  the  money  that  was 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  135 

found  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  in  the  land  of  Canaan, 
for  the  corn  which  they  bought :  and  Joseph  brought  the 
money  into  Pharaoh's  house. 

15.  And,  when  money  failed  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  and 
in  the  land  of  Canaan,  all  the  Egyptians  came  unto 
Joseph,  and  said.  Give  us  bread :  for  why  should  we  die 
in  thy  presence  ?  for  the  money  faileth. 

16.  And  Joseph  said.  Give  your  cattle ;  and  I  will  give 
you  for  your  cattle,  if  money  fail. 

17.  And  they  brought  their  cattle  unto  Joseph  :  and 
Joseph  gave  them  bread  in  exchange  for  horses,  and  for 
the  flocks,  and  for  the  cattle  of  the  herds,  and  for  the 
asses ;  and  he  fed  them  with  bread,  for  all  their  cattle, 
for  that  year. 

18.  When  that  year  was  ended,  they  came  unto  him  the 
second  year,  and  said  unto  him,  We  will  not  hide  it  from 
my  lord,  how  that  our  money  is  spent ;  my  lord  also  liath 
our  herds  of  cattle :  there  is  not  aught  left  in  the  sight  of 
my  lord,  but  our  bodies  and  our  lands : 

19.  Wherefore  shall  we  die  before  thine  eyes,  both  wc 
and  our  land  ?  buy  us  and  our  land  for  bread,  and  we  and 
our  land  will  be  servants  unto  Pharaoh:  and  give  us 
seed,  that  we  may  live,  and  not  die  that  the  land  be  not 
desolate. 

20.  And  Joseph  bought  ail  the  land  of  Egypt  for 
Pharaoh ;  for  the  Egyptians  sold  every  man  his  field, 
because  the  famine  pre  vail  eo  over  them  :  so  the  land 
became  Pharaoh's. 

21.  And  as  for  the  people,  he  removed  them  to  cities 
from  one  end  of  the  borders  of  Egypt  even  to  the  other 
end  thereof. 

22.  Only  the  land  of  the  priests  bought  he  not ;  for  the 
priests  had  a  portion  assigned  them  of  Pharaoh,  and  did 
eat  their  portion  which  Pharaoh  gave  them ;  wherefore 
they  sold  not  their  lands. 

23.  Then  Joseph  said  unto  the  people.  Behold,  I  have 


136  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

bought  you  this  day  and  your  land  for  Pharaoh :  lo,  here 
is  seed  for  you,  and  ye  shall  sow  the  land. 

24.  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  increase,  that  ye 
shall  give  the  fifth  part  unto  Pharaoh,  and  four  parts  sliall 
be  your  own,  for  seed  of  the  field,  and  for  your  food,  and 
for  them  of  your  households,  and  for  food  for  your  little 
ones. 

25.  And  they  said.  Thou  hast  saved  our  lives:  let  us 
find  grace  in  the  sight  of  my  lord,  and  we  will  be  Pha- 
raoh's servants. 

26.  And  Joseph  made  it  a  law  over  the  land  of  Egypt 
unto  this  day,  that  Pharaoh  should  have  the  fifth  part ; 
except  the  land  of  the  priests  only,  which  became  not 
Pharaoh's. 

Before  this,  Pharaoh,  to  exploit  the  labours  of  the 
people,  had  to  compel  them  by  force  to  work  for  him ; 
but  now,  since  the  provisions  and  the  land  are  all  in  the 
hands  of  Pharaoh,  he  needs  only  to  watch  them  by  force, 
and  may  compel  them  by  hunger  to  work  for  him. 

The  whole  land  is  Pharaoh's,  and  the  provisions  (what 
can  be  taken  away)  are  always  in  his  hands,  and  so, 
instead  of  driving  each  one  individually  with  the  sword 
to  work,  he  needs  only  guard  the  provisions  by  force,  and 
the  people  are  enslaved,  not  by  the  sword,  but  by  hunger. 

In  a  year  of  famine,  all  may  by  Pharaoh's  will  be 
starved  to  death,  and  in  a  year  of  plenty  those  may  be 
starved  who,  from  some  accidental  mishaps,  have  no 
supply  of  corn. 

And  there  establishes  itself  a  second  method  of  enslave- 
ment, not  directly  by  the  sword,  that  is,  by  this,  that  the 
one  who  is  strong,  threatening  with  death,  drives  the  one 
who  is  weak  to  work,  but  by  this,  that  the  strong  man, 
taking  the  provisions  away  and  guarding  them  with  the 
sword,  compels  the  weak  man  to  surrender  himself  to 
work  for  his  food. 

Joseph  says  to  the  hungry  :  "  I  can  starve  you  to  death, 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       137 

because  I  have  the  corn ;  but  I  spare  you,  if,  for  the  bread 
which  I  give  you,  you  will  do  what  I  command." 

For  the  first  method  of  enslavement  the  one  in  power 
needs  only  have  warriors,  who  make  their  rounds  among 
the  inhabitants  and  under  the  threat  of  death  carry  out  the 
demand  of  the  powerful  man.  With  the  first  method 
the  oppressor  need  divide  only  with  his  warriors.  But 
with  the  second  method,  the  oppressor  needs,  in  addition 
to  the  warriors  necessary  to  guard  the  stores  of  corn  and 
the  land  against  the  starving,  another  class  of  assistants, 
—  big  and  little  Josephs,  —  managers  and  distributers 
of  corn.  •  And  the  oppressor  has  to  divide  up  with  them 
and  to  give  Joseph  a  vesture  of  fine  linen,  a  gold  ring, 
and  servants,  and  corn,  and  silver  for  his  brothers  and 
relatives.  Besides,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  the 
accomplices  in  the  violence  of  this  second  method  are  not 
only  the  managers  and  their  relatives,  but  also  all  those 
who  have  supplies  of  corn.  As  in  the  first  method,  which 
is  based  on  rude  force,  every  one  who  had  arms  became 
a  participant  in  the  violence,  so  in  this  method,  which 
is  based  on  hunger,  every  one  who  has  supplies  takes 
part  in  the  oppression  and  rules  over  those  who  have 
none. 

The  advantage  of  this  method  over  the  first  consists  for 
the  oppressor  in  this:  (1)  above  all  else,  that  he  is  no 
longer  obliged  to  exert  an  effort  in  compelling  the  labour- 
ers to  do  his  will,  but  that  the  labourers  come  themselves 
and  sell  themselves  to  him ;  (2)  that  a  smaller  number  of 
men  slip  away  from  his  oppression.  The  disadvantage 
for  the  oppressor  is  only  this,  that  in  this  method  he  has 
to  divide  up  with  a  larger  number  of  men.  The  advan- 
tage in  this  method  for  the  oppressed  is  this,  that  they 
are  no  longer  subjected  to  rude  violence,  but  are  left  to 
themselves  and  may  always  hope  to  pass  over  from  the 
oppressed  to  the  oppressor,  which  in  reality  they  some- 
times are  able   to   do   under  favourable  conditions ;  but 


138  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

their  disadvantage  is  this,  that  they  can  never  slip  away 
from  a  certain  amount  of  violence. 

This  new  method  of  enslavement  generally  enters  into 
use  with  the  old,  and  the  powerful  man  reduces  the  one 
and  expands  the  other,  as  the  need  for  it  may  arise.  But 
even  this  method  of  enslavement  does  not  fully  satisfy 
the  wishes  of  the  powerful  man,  —  to  take  away  the  great- 
est possible  amount  of  products  of  labour  from  the  greatest 
possible  number  of  labourers,  and  to  enslave  the  great- 
est possible  number  of  men,  —  and  does  not  correspond  to 
the  more  complex  conditions  of  life,  and  a  new  method  of 
enslavement  is  worked  out. 

The  new,  and  third,  method  is  the  method  of  tribute. 
This  method,  like  the  second,  is  based  on  hunger,  but  to 
the  means  of  enslaving  men  by  depriving  them  of  bread 
is  added  also  that  of  depriving  them  of  the  other  necessi- 
ties. The  powerful  man  exacts  from  his  slaves  such  an 
amount  of  monetary  tokens,  which  he  himself  possesses, 
that,  in  order  to  obtain  them,  the  slaves  are  obliged  not 
only  to  sell  supplies  of  corn  on  a  larger  scale  than  that 
fifth  which  Joseph  determined,  but  also  articles  of  prime 
necessity,  —  meat,  hides,  wool,  garments,  fuel,  buildings 
even,  and  so  the  oppressor  always  keeps  his  slaves  in  sub- 
jection, not  only  through  hunger,  but  also  through  thirst, 
and  want,  and  cold,  and  all  other  kinds  of  privations. 

And  there  establishes  itself  a  third  form  of  slavery, 
that  of  money,  which  consists  in  this,  that  the  powerful 
man  says  to  the  weak :  "  I  can  do  with  each  of  you  sepa- 
rately what  I  please ;  I  can  simply  kill  you  with  a  gun, 
or  I  can  kill  you  by  taking  away  your  land  which  feeds 
you,  or  I  can,  for  the  monetary  tokens,  which  you  must 
furnish  me,  buy  up  all  the  corn  on  which  you  feed,  and 
sell  it  to  strangers,  and  any  moment  starve  you  out ;  I 
can  take  away  everything  which  you  have,  —  your  cattle, 
your  dwellings,  your  garments,  —  but  that  is  not  conve- 
nient and  agreeable  for  me,  and  so  I  leave  it  to  you  to 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  139 

dispose  of  your  labour  and  the  products  of  your  labour 
as  you  please  ;  only  give  me  so  many  monetary  tokens, 
which  demand  I  distribute  either  by  heads,  or  according 
to  the  land  on  which  you  are  settled,  or  according  to 
your  food  and  drink,  or  your  garments,  or  buildings.  Let 
me  have  these  tokens,  and  arrange  matters  amoDg  your- 
selves as  you  please ;  but  know  this  much,  that  I  will 
not  defend  and  protect  the  widows,  nor  the  orphans,  nor 
the  sick,  nor  the  old,  nor  those  v»ho  have  suffered  from 
tires ;  I  will  defend  only  the  regulaiity  of  the  circulation 
of  these  monetary  tokens.  Only  he  who  gives  me  reg- 
ularly, in  accordance  with  my  demand,  the  estabhshed 
amount  of  monetary  tokens,  will  be  right  in  my  eyes  and 
will  receive  my  protection.  It  is  a  matter  of  indifference 
to  me  how  these  monetary  tokens  are  obtained." 

And  the  powerful  man  issues  these  tokens,  as  receipts 
for  the  fulfilment  of  his  demands. 

The  second  method  of  enslavement  consists  in  this, 
that,  taking  away  the  fifth  part  of  the  crops  and  laying 
by  stores  of  corn,  Pharaoh,  in  addition  to  the  personal 
enslavement  by  means  of  the  sword,  receives,  with  his 
assistants,  the  possibility  of  ruling  all  the  workingmen  in 
time  of  famine  and  some  of  them  in  time  of  calamities 
which  befall  them.  The  third  method  consists  in  this, 
that  Pharaoh  demands  of  the  labourers  more  than  the 
part  of  corn  costs  which  he  took  from  them,  and  re- 
ceives, with  his  assistants,  a  new  means  for  ruling  the 
labourers,  not  only  in  time  of  famine  and  accidental  mis- 
haps, but  also  at  all  times. 

With  the  second  method  the  people  keep  supplies  of 
corn,  which  help  them,  without  surrendering  themselves 
to  slavery,  to  bear  small  failures  of  crops  and  accidental 
mishaps ;  with  the  third  method,  when  the  exactions  are 
greater,  the  supplies  of  corn  are  all  taken  away,  and  so 
are  all  the  other  supplies  of  articles  of  prime  necessity, 
and  with  the  slightest  mishap  the  labourer,  who  has  no 


140  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

supplies  of  corn,  nor  any  other  supplies,  which  he  might 
be  able  to  exchange  for  corn,  is  subjected  to  slavery  by 
those  who  have  money.  With  the  tirst  method  the  op- 
pressor needs  only  have  warriors  and  divide  with  them ; 
with  the  second  method  he  has  to  have,  in  addition  to 
the  guardians  of  the  land  and  of  the  supplies  of  corn,  col- 
lectors and  clerks  for  the  distribution  of  the  corn ;  with 
the  third  method  he  can  no  longer  himself  rule  the  land, 
but  in  addition  to  the  warriors  to  guard  the  land  and  the 
wealth,  he  must  also  have  owners  of  land  and  collectors 
of  tribute,  distributers  according  to  heads  or  to  articles  of 
use,  superintendents,  customs  servants,  managers  of  money, 
and  operators  with  money. 

The  organization  of  the  third  method  is  much  more 
complicated  than  the  second ;  with  the  second  method, 
the  collecting  of  the  corn  may  be  farmed  out,  as  was  done 
in  ancient  times  and  is  even  now  done  in  Turkey  ;  but  in 
burdening  the  slaves  with  taxes,  a  complicated  adminis- 
tration of  men  is  needed,  to  watch  after  this,  that  the 
men,  or  their  acts  which  are  taxable,  shall  not  escape  the 
tribute.  And  so,  with  the  third  method,  the  oppressor 
has  to  share  with  a  still  greater  number  of  men  than  with 
the  second  method ;  besides,  in  the  very  nature  of  things, 
all  the  men,  either  of  the  same  or  of  a  foreign  country, 
who  have  money,  become  the  participants  in  this  third 
method.  The  advantages  of  this  method  for  the  op- 
pressor over  the  first  and  the  second  methods  are  the 
following : 

In  the  first  place,  that  by  means  of  this  method  a 
greater  amount  of  work  may  be  got  out  in  a  more  con- 
venient manner,  for  a  money  tax  is  like  a  screw,  —  it 
may  be  easily  and  conveniently  screwed  in  to  its  highest 
limit,  care  being  taken  that  the  golden  hen  is  not  killad, 
so  that  it  is  not  even  necessary  to  wait  for  a  year  of  fam- 
ine, as  in  the  case  of  Joseph,  because  the  year  of  famine 
is  made  perpetual, 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN"?  141 

In  the  second  place,  that  with  this  method  the  violence 
is  now  extended  over  all  the  people  without  land,  who 
formerly  escaped  and  gave  only  part  of  their  labour  away, 
but  now  are  obhged,  in  addition  to  the  part  of  their  labour 
which  they  u:sed  to  give  for  the  corn,  to  give  also  part  of 
this  labour  as  taxes  to  the  oppressor. 

The  disadvantage  for  the  oppressor  consists  in  this, 
that  with  this  method  he  has  to  share  with  a  greater 
number  of  men,  not  only  of  his  immediate  assistants,  but 
also,  in  the  first  place,  with  all  those  private  landowners 
who  generally  make  their  appearance  with  this  third 
method ;  in  the  second  place,  with  all  those  men  of  his 
owTi,  and  even  of  a  foreign,  nation,  who  have  the  monetary 
tokens  which  are  demanded  of  the  slaves. 

The  advantage  for  the  oppressed  man,  in  comparison 
with  the  second  method,  is  this  :  he  receives  a  still  greater 
personal  independence  from  the  oppressor ;  he  can  live 
where  he  pleases,  do  what  he  pleases,  and  sow  grain,  or 
not ;  he  is  not  obliged  to  give  an  account  of  his  work  and, 
having  money,  may  consider  himself  quite  free,  and  con- 
stantly hope  to  obtain,  and  actually  obtain,  for  a  time  at 
least,  if  he  has  surplus  money  or  land  bought  for  it,  not 
only  an  independent  condition,  but  also  that  of  an  op- 
pressor. 

The  disadvantage  to  him  is  this,  that  in  its  totality  the 
condition  of  the  oppressed,  under  this  third  method,  be- 
comes much  harder,  and  they  are  deprived  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  products  of  their  labour,  since  with  this  third 
method  the  number  of  men  who  exploit  the  labour  of 
others  is  still  greater,  and  so  the  burden  of  supporting 
them  falls  on  a  smaller  number. 

This  third  method  of  enslavement  is  also  very  old,  and 
enters  into  use  with  the  other  two,  without  completely 
excluding  them.  All  three  methods  of  enslavement  have 
never  ceased  to  exist.  All  three  methods  may  be  com- 
pared with  screws  which  hold  down  the  plank  that  is 


142  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

laid  over  the  labourers  and  is  choking  them.  The  chief, 
fundamental,  middle  screw,  without  which  the  other 
screws  will  not  hold,  which  is  the  first  to  be  screwed  in 
and  is  never  relaxed,  is  the  screw  of  personal  slavery,  of 
the  enslavement  of  one  set  of  men  by  another  by  means 
of  the  threat  of  execution  by  the  sword  ;  the  second  screw, 
which  is  screwed  in  after  the  first,  is  the  enslavement  of 
people  by  means  of  depriving  them  of  the  land  and  of  the 
provisions  of  food,  a  seizure  which  is  supported  by  the  per- 
sonal threat  of  execution ;  and  the  third  screw  is  the  en- 
slavement of  people  by  means  of  a  demand  for  monetary 
tokens,  which  they  do  not  have,  again  supported  by  the 
threat  of  murder.  All  three  screws  are  screwed  in,  and 
only  when  one  is  tightened  do  the  others  weaken.  For 
the  complete  enslavement  of  the  labourer  all  three  screws 
—  all  three  kinds  of  enslavement  —  are  needed,  and  in 
our  society  all  three  methods  of  enslavement  are  con- 
stantly in  use,  —  all  three  screws  are  always  screwed  in. 

The  first  method  of  the  enslavement  of  men  by  means 
of  personal  violence  and  the  threat  of  execution  by  the 
sword  has  never  been  abolished,  and  will  not  be  abolished 
so  long  as  there  exists  any  kind  of  an  enslavement  of  one 
set  of  men  by  another,  because  upon  it  every  enslavement 
is  based.  We  are  all  very  naively  convinced  that  personal 
slavery  has  been  abolished  in  our  civilized  world,  that 
its  last  remnants  have  been  destroyed  in  America  and 
in  Russia,  and  that  now  barbarians  alone  have  slavery, 
while  we  do  not  have  it.  We  all  forget  about  a  small 
circumstance,  about  those  hundreds  of  millions  of  a  stand- 
ing army,  without  which  there  does  not  exist  a  single 
government,  and  with  the  abolition  of  which  the  whole 
economic  structure  of  any  government  will  inevitably  go 
to  pieces.  What  are  these  millions  of  soldiers,  if  not  the 
personal  jlaves  of  those  who  rule  over  them  ?  Are  not 
these  men  compelled  to  do  the  whole  will  of  their  owners 
under  threat  of  torments  and  of  death,  —  a  threat  which 


WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO    THEN?  143 

is  frequently  carried  out?  The  only  difference  is  this, 
that  the  subjection  of  these  slaves  is  not  called  slavery, 
but  discipline,  and  that  the  others  were  slaves  from  their 
birth  to  their  death,  while  these  are  so  only  for  the  longer 
or  shorter  time  of  their  so-called  service. 

Personal  slavery  has  not  only  not  been  abohshed  in  our 
civilized  societies,  but  with  the  universal  military  service 
it  has  of  late  been  strengthened,  and  it  remains  at  present 
such  as  it  has  always  been,  only  a  little  changed.  It 
cannot  help  but  be,  for,  so  long  as  there  is  any  enslave- 
ment of  one  set  of  men  by  another,  there  will  be  this 
personal  slavery,  which  with  the  threat  of  the  sword 
supports  the  territorial  and  tax  enslavement  of  men.  It 
may  be  that  this  slavery,  that  is  the  army,  is  very  neces- 
sary, as  they  say,  for  the  defence  and  the  glory  of  the 
country,  but  this  usefulness  is  more  than  doubtful,  for  we 
see  that  in  unsuccessful  wars  it  frequently  serves  for 
the  enslavement  and  degradation  of  the  country  ;  but  what 
is  quite  indubitable  is  the  usefulness  of  this  slavery  for 
the  purpose  of  maintaining  the  territorial  and  tax  enslave- 
ment. Let  the  Irish  or  the  Russian  peasants  get  posses- 
sion of  the  proprietors'  lands,  the  armies  will  come  and 
take  them  back  again.  Let  one  build  a  distillery  or 
brewery  and  refuse  to  pay  the  revenue,  and  the  soldiers 
will  come  and  stop  the  plant.  Refuse  to  pay  taxes,  and 
the  same  will  happen. 

The  second  screw  is  the  method  of  enslaving  people 
by  depriving  them  of  their  land,  and  so,  of  their  food 
supphes.  This  method  of  enslavement  has  also  existed 
and  will  always  exist,  wherever  men  are  enslaved,  and, 
no  matter  how  much  it  may  be  modilied,  it  exists  every- 
where. At  times  the  whole  land  belongs  to  the  king,  as 
is  the  case  in  Turkey,  and  one-tenth  of  the  crop  is  collected 
for  the  treasury ;  at  others  only  part  of  the  laud,  and  a 
tax  is  collected  from  it ;  again,  the  whole  land  belongs  to 
a  small   number  of  men,  and  a  share  of  the  labour  is 


144  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

exacted,  as  is  the  case  in  England ;  or  a  greater  or  smaller 
part  belongs  to  large  proprietors,  as  in  Russia,  Germany, 
and  France.  But,  wherever  there  is  any  enslavement, 
there  is  also  the  appropriation  of  the  land  by  means  of 
enslavement. 

The  screw  of  this  enslavement  of  people  is  loosened  oi 
tightened  in  proportion  as  the  other  screws  are  screwed 
down ;  thus,  in  Eussia,  w^hen  the  personal  enslavement 
was  distributed  over  the  majority  of  the  labourers,  the 
territorial  enslavement  was  superfluous ;  but  the  screw  of 
the  personal  enslavement  in  Russia  was  loosened  only 
when  the  screws  of  the  territorial  and  tax  enslavement 
were  tightened.  All  were  attached  to  communes,  all 
migration  and  transposition  were  discouraged,  the  land 
was  appropriated  or  given  away  to  private  persons,  and 
then  the  peasants  were  set  free.  In  England,  for  example, 
the  territorial  enslavement  is  most  active,  and  the  question 
of  the  nationalization  of  the  land  consists  merely  in  tighten- 
ing the  tax  screw,  in  order  to  loosen  the  screw  of  the 
territorial  enslavement. 

The  third  method  of  enslavement  —  by  means  of 
tribute,  of  taxes  —  has  similarly  existed,  and,  in  our 
time,  with  the  dissemination  of  uniform  monetary  tokens 
in  the  different  countries  and  the  strengthening  of  the 
governmental  power,  has  only  acquired  a  special  force. 
This  method  has  been  so  worked  out  in  our  time  that  it 
is  striving  to  substitute  itself  for  the  second,  the  terri- 
torial method  of  enslavement.  It  is  the  screw  which, 
when  tightened  down,  weakens  the  territorial  screw,  as  is 
evident  from  the  economic  condition  of  the  whole  of 
Europe.  We  have  within  our  memory  gone  in  Russia 
through  two  passages  of  slavery  from  one  form  into 
another :  w^hen  the  serfs  were  emancipated  and  the  pro- 
prietors were  left  with  the  right  to  the  greater  part  of 
the  land,  the  proprietors  were  afraid  that  their  power  over 
their  peasants  was  escaping  from  them;  but  experience 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  145 

showed  that  they  needed  only  to  let  out  of  their  hands 
the  old  scourge  of  the  personal  slavery  and  take  up 
another,  the  territorial  scourge.  The  peasant  had  no  corn 
to  feed  on,  and  the  proprietor  had  the  land  and  the 
supply  of  corn,  and  so  the  peasant  was  left  the  same 
slave  he  had  been. 

The  second  passage  was  when  the  government  with  its 
taxes  screwed  down  very  tightly  the  other  screw,  that  of 
the  taxes,  and  the  majority  of  the  labourers  were  com- 
pelled to  sell  themselves  into  slavery  to  the  landed  pro- 
prietors and  into  the  factories.  And  thus  a  new  form  of 
slavery  took  possession  of  the  people  even  more  thor- 
oughly, so  that  nine-tenths  of  the  working  classes  work 
for  the  proprietors  and  in  the  factories,  only  because  they 
are  compelled  to  do  so  by  the  demand  for  state  and  land 
taxes.  This  is  so  obvious  that,  let  the  government  just 
try  not  collecting  any  direct,  indirect,  and  land  taxes  for 
the  period  of  one  year,  and  all  the  works  in  other  people's 
fields  and  in  the  factories  will  come  to  a  standstill.  Nine- 
tenths  of  the  Russian  people  hire  out  during  the  time 
that  the  taxes  are  levied,  and  for  the  purpose  of  paying 
the  taxes. 

All  three  methods  of  the  enslavement  of  people  have 
never  ceased  to  exist,  and  exist  now ;  but  people  are 
prone  not  to  notice  them,  the  moment  new  justifications 
are  found  for  these  methods.  And  what  is  strange  is 
that  this  very  method,  on  which  at  the  present  time 
everything  is  based,  —  this  screw  which  holds  everything 
together,  —  is  not  noticed. 

When  in  the  ancient  world  the  whole  economic  struc- 
ture was  based  on  personal  slavery,  the  greatest  minds 
could  not  see  that  it  was  it.  It  seemed  to  Xenophon,  and 
to  Plato,  and  to  Aristotle,  and  to  the  Romans  that  it 
could  not  be  otherwise,  and  that  slavery  was  the  inevi- 
table outcome  of  wai-s,  without  which  humanity  was 
unthinkable.     Even  so  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  down  to 


146  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

our  own  time  men  did  not  see  the  significance  of  terri- 
torial possession  and  the  consequent  slavery,  on  which 
the  whole  economic  structure  of  the  Middle  Ages  was 
based.  Even  so  no  one  sees  now,  nor  wants  to  see,  that 
in  our  time  the  enslavement  of  the  majority  of  people  is 
based  on  the  monetary  state  and  land  taxes,  which  are 
collected  by  the  governments  from  their  subjects,  —  taxes 
which  are  collected  by  means  of  the  administration  and 
the  army,  which  are  maintained  by  the  taxes. 


XXI. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  slaves  themselves,  who 
since  antiquity  have  been  subjected  to  slavery,  are  not 
conscious  of  their  condition  and  consider  that  condition 
of  slavery  in  which  they  have  always  lived  as  a  natural 
condition  of  human  life,  and  see  an  alleviation  in  the 
change  of  the  form  of  slavery.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that 
the  slave-owners  sometimes  sincerely  mean  to  free  the 
slaves,  —  to  loosen  one  screw,  when  the  other  is  abeady 
tightened.  Both  are  accustomed  to  their  condition,  and 
the  first,  the  slaves,  who  do  not  know  what  liberty  is, 
seek  only  alleviation  or  at  least  a  change  of  the  form 
of  slavery  ;  the  others,  the  slave-owners,  who  wish  to  con- 
ceal their  injustice,  try  to  ascribe  a  special  significance  to 
those  new  forms  of  slavery  which  they  impose  on  the 
people  in  the  place  of  the  old. 

But  what  is  remarkable  is  how  science,  the  so-called 
free  science,  can,  in  investigating  the  economic  conditions 
of  the  people's  life,  help  seeing  what  forms  the  basis  of 
all  the  economic  conditions  of  the  people  ?  One  would 
think  that  it  is  the  business  of  science  to  discover  the 
connection  between  phenomena,  and  the  common  cause 
of  a  series  of  phenomena.  Political  economy  does  pre- 
cisely the  opposite  :  it  carefully  conceals  the  connection  of 
the  phenomena  and  their  significance,  and  carefully  avoids 
all  answers  to  the  simplest  and  most  essential  questions ; 
it  is  like  a  lazy,  restive  horse,  which  goes  well  only  down- 
hill, when  there  is  nothing  to  pull ;  but  the  moment  it  is 
necessary  to  pull,  it  prances  toward  one  side,  pretending 
that  it  has  to  go  somewhere  to  one  side,  to  attend  to  its 

M7 


148  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

own  business.  The  moment  a  serious,  essential  question 
presents  itself  to  science,  there  at  once  begin  scientific 
discussions  about  subjects  which  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question  and  which  have  but  one  purpose,  —  to  draw 
the  attention  away  from  the  question. 

You  ask  what  the  cause  is  of  that  unnatural,  monstrous, 
irrational,  and  not  only  useless,  but  even  harmful,  phe- 
nomenon that  certain  men  can  neither  eat  nor  work 
except  by  the  will  of  other  men.  And  science  answers 
with  a  most  serious  look  :  Because  certain  people  attend 
to  the  work  and  nourishment  of  others,  —  such  being  the 
law  of  production. 

You  ask  what  the  right  of  property  is,  on  the  basis  of 
which  one  set  of  men  appropriate  to  themselves  the  land, 
the  food,  and  the  tools  of  labour  of  others.  Science 
answers  with  a  most  serious  look :  This  right  is  based  on 
the  defence  of  one's  labour,  that  is,  that  the  defence  of 
labour  by  one  set  of  men  is  expressed  by  the  seizure 
of  the  labour  of  other  men. 

You  ask  what  that  money  is  which  is  coined  and 
printed  everywhere  by  the  government,  that  is,  by  the 
power,  and  which  is  in  such  enormous  quantities  exacted 
from  the  labourers,  and  which  in  the  form  of  state  debts 
is  imposed  on  future  generations  of  labourers.  You  ask 
whether  this  money,  carried  to  the  farthest  limits  of  pos- 
sible exaction,  in  these  proportions  has  not  an  effect  on 
the  economic  relations  of  the  people  who  are  paying  to 
the  receivers.  And  science  with  a  most  serious  look  tells 
you  :  Money  is  a  commodity,  like  sugar  and  chintz,  which 
differs  from  these  only  in  that  it  is  more  convenient  for 
exchange ;  but  the  taxes  have  no  effect  at  all  upon  the 
economic  conditions  of  the  people :  the  laws  of  produc- 
tion, of  exchange,  of  the  distribution  of  wealth  are  one 
thing,  and  the  taxes  are  another. 

You  ask  whether  the  economic  conditions  are  not 
influenced  by  this,  that  the  government  of  its  own  will 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  149 

may  raise  or  lower  prices,  and  may,  by  raising  the  taxes, 
enslave  all  those  who  have  land.  Science  with  a  most 
serious  look  answers  :  Not  at  all !  The  laws  of  production, 
exchange,  distribution,  are  one  science,  and  taxes  and  the 
management  of  the  state  in  general  are  another  science,  — 
the  law  of  finance. 

You  ask,  finally,  about  the  whole  nation's  being  en- 
slaved by  the  government,  about  the  government  being 
able  of  its  own  will  to  ruin  all  men,  to  take  away  from 
them  all  the  products  of  their  labour,  and  even  to  tear  the 
men  away  from  labour,  by  putting  them  into  mihtary 
slavery  ;  you  ask  whether  this  circumstance  has  any  effect 
upon  the  economic  conditions.  To  this,  science  does  not 
even  trouble  itself  to  reply  :  this  is  an  entirely  different 
science,  —  that  of  civil  government. 

Science  most  seriously  analyzes  the  laws  of  the  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  nation,  whose  every  function  and  activ- 
ity depends  on  the  will  of  the  enslaver,  and  recognizes 
this  influence  of  the  enslaver  as  a  natural  condition  of  the 
nation's  life ;  science  does  the  same  tliat  the  investigator 
of  the  economic  condition  of  the  life  of  personal  serfs 
belomjins;  to  various  masters  would  do,  if  he  did  not  take 
into  consideration  the  influence  upon  the  lives  of  the  slaves 
which  is  exerted  by  the  will  of  the  master,  who  by  his 
arbitrary  will  compels  them  to  do  this  or  that  work, 
according  to  his  will  drives  them  from  one  spot  to  another, 
and  according  to  his  will  feeds  them,  or  does  not  feed 
them,  kills  them,  or  lets  them  live. 

One  is  inclined  to  think  that  science  does  so  out  of 
stupidity ;  but  it  is  enough  to  grasp  and  analyze  the  prop- 
ositions of  science  in  order  to  become  convinced  that  it  is 
not  due  to  stupidity,  but  to  great  ingenuity. 

This  science  has  a  very  definite  aim,  which  it  attains. 
This  aim  is  to  keep  people  in  superstition  and  deception, 
and  thus  to  prevent  humanity  from  moving  toward  the 
truth  and  the  good.     There  has  long  existed  a  terriljle 


150  WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

superstition  which  has  done  almost  more  harm  to  people 
than  the  most  terrible  superstitions.  And  it  is  this  super- 
stition which  the  so-called  science  sustains  with  all  its 
might  and  main. 

This  superstition  is  very  much  like  religious  supersti- 
tions :  it  consists  in  the  assertion  that,  in  addition  to  the 
obhgations  which  man  has  to  man,  there  exist  still  more 
important  obligations  to  an  imaginary  being.  For  theology 
this  imaginary  being  is  God,  and  for  political  sciences  it  is 
the  state.  The  rehgious  superstition  consists  in  this, 
that  the  sacrifices,  sometimes  of  human  lives,  which  are 
brought  to  the  imaginary  being,  are  necessary,  and  men 
can  and  must  be  Ijrought  to  them  by  all  means,  not  even 
excluding  violence.  The  pohtical  superstition  consists  in 
this,  that,  in  addition  to  the  obhgations  of  man  to  man, 
there  exist  more  important  obligations  to  the  imaginary 
being,  and  the  sacrifices,  very  frequently  of  human  lives, 
which  are  brought  to  the  imaginary  being,  the  state,  are 
also  necessary,  and  men  can  and  must  be  brought  to  them 
by  all  means,  not  excluding  violence.  This  superstition, 
which  formerly  was  sustained  by  priests  of  various  relig- 
ions, is  now  sustained  by  the  so-called  science.  Men  are 
thrust  into  a  more  terrible  and  a  worse  slavery  than  any 
other ;  but  science  tries  to  assure  people  that  this  is 
necessary  and  cannot  be  otherwise. 

The  state  must  exist  for  the  good  of  the  people  and 
must  do  its  business,  —  rule  the  people  and  defend  them 
from  the  enemy.  For  this  the  state  needs  money  and  an 
army.  The  money  is  to  be  supplied  by  all  the  citizens  of 
the  state,  and  so  all  the  relations  of  men  must  be  viewed 
under  the  necessary  conditions  of  political  existence. 

"  I  want  to  help  my  father  in  his  farm  work,"  says  a 
simple,  untutored  man,  "  I  want  to  marry,  and  they  take 
me  and  send  me  for  six  years  to  Kazan  to  be  a  sol- 
dier. I  leave  the  army,  want  to  plough  the  land  and 
support  my  family,  but  for  a  hundred  versts  about  me  1 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN  ?  151 

am  not  permitted  to  plough,  unless  I  pay  money,  which 
I  do  not  have,  to  those  people  who  do  not  know  how  to 
plough  and  demand  so  much  money  for  it  that  I  am  com- 
pelled to  give  them  all  my  labour.  I  manage  to  earn 
something  and  want  to  give  my  surplus  to  my  children ; 
but  the  rural  officer  comes  to  me  and  takes  away  my 
surplus  in  the  shape  of  taxes  ;  again  I  earn  some,  and  every- 
thing is  taken  from  me.  My  whole  economic  activity, 
all  of  it,  without  any  residue,  is  dependent  on  the  demands 
of  the  state,  and  it  appears  to  me  that  the  improvement 
of  my  condition  and  of  that  of  my  brothers  must  come 
from  our  liberation  from  the  demands  of  the  state." 

But  science  says :  Your  judgments  are  due  to  your 
ignorance.  Learn  tlie  laws  of  production,  exchange,  and 
distribution  of  wealth,  and  do  not  mix  up  economic  ques- 
tions with  questions  of  state.  The  phenomena  to  which 
you  point  are  not  restrictions  of  your  freedom,  but  those 
necessary  sacrifices,  which,  together  with  others,  you 
bring  for  your  freedom  and  your  good. 

"  But  they  have  taken  my  sou  from  me  and  promise  to 
take  all  my  other  sons  as  soon  as  I  see  them  grow  up," 
again  says  the  simple  man.  "  They  take  them  forcibly 
from  me  and  drive  them  under  bullets  into  another  coun- 
try, of  which  we  have  never  heard,  and  for  purposes  which 
we  cannot  understand.  But  the  land,  which  we  are  not 
permitted  to  plough  and  the  lack  of  which  causes  us  to 
starve,  is  owned  by  a  man  whom  we  have  never  seen  and 
whose  usefulness  we  are  not  able  even  to  comprehend. 
But  the  taxes,  to  satisfy  which  the  officer  took  the  cow 
away  from  my  children,  by  force,  for  all  I  know  will  go 
back  to  this  officer  who  took  the  cow  away  from  me,  and 
to  various  members  of  commissions  and  ministries,  whom 
I  do  not  even  know,  and  in  whose  usefulness  I  do  not 
believe.  How,  then,  can  all  these  violences  secure  my 
liberty,  and  how  can  all  this  evil  do  me  any  good  ? " 

It  is  possible  to  make  a  man  be  a  slave,  and  do  what 


152  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

he  considers  to  be  evil,  but  it  is  impossible  to  make  him 
think  that,  while  suffering  violence,  he  is  free,  and  that 
the  obvious  evil  which  he  is  suffering  is  for  his  good. 
That  seems  impossible;  but  that  is  precisely  what  has 
been  done  in  our  day  with  the  help  of  science. 

The  government,  that  is,  armed  people  doing  violence, 
decides  what  it  needs  from  those  to  whom  it  offers 
violence ;  Hke  the  English  in  respect  to  the  Fijiaus,  it 
decides  how  many  assistants  it  needs  for  the  collecting  of 
this  labour,  organizes  its  assistants  in  the  form  of  soldiers, 
in  the  form  of  landed  proprietors,  and  in  the  form  of  col- 
lectors of  taxes.  And  the  slaves  give  up  their  labour 
and  at  the  same  time  believe  that  they  give  it  up,  not 
because  their  masters  want  it,  but  because  for  their  free- 
dom and  their  good  they  must  serve  and  bring  bloody 
sacrifices  to  the  divinity  called  "  the  state,"  but  that,  out- 
side of  this  divinity,  they  are  free.  They  believe  this, 
because  formerly  religion  and  the  priests  talked  that  way, 
and  because  science  and  the  learned  say  so.  But  we  need 
only  stop  believing  blindly  in  what  other  people,  calhng 
themselves  priests  and  learned  men,  say,  in  order  that 
the  insipidity  of  such  an  assertion  may  become  evident. 
People  who  do  violence  to  others  say  that  this  violence  is 
necessary  for  the  government,  and  that  the  government 
is  necessary  for  the  freedom  and  for  the  good  of  the 
people :  it  turns  out  that  oppressors  oppress  the  people 
for  the  sake  of  their  freedom,  and  do  them  evil  for  their 
good.  But  people  are  rational  beings  that  they  may  un- 
derstand in  what  their  good  lies,  and  that  they  may  be 
free  to  do  it. 

But  the  deeds,  the  goodness  of  which  is  incomprehen- 
sible to  people,  and  to  which  they  are  urged  on  by  force, 
cannot  be  good  for  them,  for  a  rational  being  can  regard 
as  good  only  that  which  presents  itself  as  such  to  his 
mind.  If  people  from  passion  or  ignorance  are  drawn 
toward  the  evil,  all  that  people  can  do,  who  do  not  act 


WHAT    SHALL   WE    DO   THEN?  153 

thus,  is  to  persuade  men  to  do  what  constitutes  their  real 
good.  It  is  possible  to  persuade  people  that  their  good 
will  be  greater  if  they  all  become  soldiers,  be  deprived  of 
land,  give  up  all  their  labour  for  taxes ;  but,  so  long  as 
people  will  not  consider  this  as  their  good,  and  will  not 
do  it  voluntarily,  this  matter  cannot  be  called  the  general 
good  of  men.  The  only  sign  of  the  goodness  of  a  deed  is 
that  all  people  do  it  of  their  own  free  will,  and  of  such 
deeds  the  lives  of  men  are  full. 

Ten  labourers  provide  themselves  with  cooper's  tools  in 
order  to  work  together,  and,  in  doing  this  work,  they  un- 
questionably do  a  common  good  to  themselves ;  but  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  imagine  that  the  labourers,  com- 
pelling an  eleventh  man  by  force  to  take  part  in  their 
association,  could  assert  that  their  common  good  will  also 
be  a  good  for  the  eleventh  man. 

The  same  is  true  of  gentlemen  who  give  a  dinner  to  a 
friend  of  theirs :  it  is  just  as  little  possible  to  assert  that 
the  dinner  will  be  a  good  thing  for  him  from  whom  they 
will  take  ten  roubles  by  force.  The  same  is  true  of 
peasants  who  decide  to  dig  a  pond  for  their  convenience. 
For  those  who  will  regard  the  existence  of  this  pond  as  a 
greater  good  than  the  labour  expended  upon  it,  the  dig- 
ging of  it  will  be  a  common  good ;  but  for  him  who  con- 
siders the  existence  of  this  pond  a  lesser  good  than  the 
harvesting  of  the  field,  to  which  he  has  come  too  late, 
the  digging  of  this  pond  can  be  no  good.  The  same  is 
true  of  roads  which  people  lay  out,  and  of  churches,  and 
museums,  and  of  the  greatest  variety  of  social  and  political 
matters.  All  these  matters  can  be  a  good  only  for  those 
who  regard  them  as  such  and  so  do  them  freely  and  will- 
ingly as  in  the  case  of  the  purchase  of  the  tools  for  the 
association,  the  dinner  given  by  the  gentlemen,  the  pond 
which  the  peasants  dig.  But  all  works  to  which  people 
have  to  be  driven  by  force  are,  in  consequence  of  this 
violence,  no  longer  common,  nor  good. 


154  WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

All  this  is  so  clear  and  so  simple  that,  if  people  had  not 
been  deceived  for  so  long  a  time,  it  would  not  be  neces- 
sary to  explain  anything.  Let  us  suppose  that  we  are 
living  in  the  country  and  that  we,  all  the  villagers,  have 
decided  to  build  a  bridge  across  a  swamp  into  which  we 
sink.  We  have  agreed  or  promised  to  give  from  each 
farm  so  much  money,  or  timber,  or  so  many  days.  We 
have  agreed  to  do  so,  only  because  the  building  of  this 
bridge  is  of  greater  importance  to  us  than  the  expense 
which  we  incur  upon  it.  But  among  us  there  are  some 
people  for  whom  it  is  more  convenient  not  to  have  a 
bridge  than  to  spend  money  upon  it,  or  who  at  least 
think  that  this  is  more  advantageous  for  them.  Can  the 
compulsion  of  these  men  to  build  the  bridge  make  it  an 
advantage  for  them  ?  Evidently  not,  because  these  men, 
who  regarded  their  free  participation  in  the  building  of 
the  bridge  as  unprofitable,  will  regard  it  as  even  more 
unprofitable,  when  it  becomes  compulsory. 

Let  us  even  suppose  that  we,  all  of  us  without  excep- 
tion, have  agreed  to  build  this  bridge  and  have  promised 
so  much  money  or  labour  from  each  farm  ;  but  it  so 
happens  that  a  few  of  those  who  promised  a  share  have 
not  furnished  it,  because  their  circumstances  have  changed, 
causing  them  to  find  it  more  advantageous  to  be  without 
the  bridge  than  spend  money  on  it ;  or  they  have  simply 
changed  their  mind  ;  or  they  simply  calculate  that  the 
others  will  build  the  bridge  without  their  contributions, 
so  that  they  also  will  be  able  to  drive  over  it :  can  com- 
pelling these  people  to  take  part  in  the  building  of  the 
bridge  make  these  compulsory  sacrifices  a  benefit  to  them  ? 
Evidently  not,  because,  if  these  men  have  not  carried  out 
what  they  promised,  on  account  of  circumstances  which 
have  changed,  so  that  the  contributions  for  the  bridge 
have  become  harder  for  them  than  the  absence  of  the 
bridge,  their  compulsory  contributions  will  only  be  a 
greater  evil   to  them.     But  if  those  who  refuse  have  a 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  155 

mind  to  make  use  of  the  labours  of  others,  their  compul- 
sion to  contribute  will  ouly  be  a  punishment  for  their 
iatention,  and  their  intention,  completely  unexpressed, 
will  be  punished  before  it  is  carried  into  effect ;  in  neither 
case  can  their  compulsion  to  take  part  in  an  undesirable 
work  be  a  good  for  them. 

Thus  it  will  be  when  the  contributions  are  received  for 
a  work  that  is  compreheusible,  obvious,  and  unquestion- 
ably useful  for  them,  like  the  bridge  over  the  swamp, 
through  which  all  travel.  How  much  more  unjust  and 
senseless  will  be  the  compulsion  exerted  on  millions  of 
people  to  make  sacrifices,  the  aim  of  which  is  incom- 
prehensible, intangible,  and  frequently  unquestionably 
harmful,  as  is  the  case  with  mihtary  service  and  with 
the  taxes.  But  according  to  science  it  turns  out  that 
what  to  all  appears  as  an  evil  is  a  common  good ;  it  turns 
out  that  there  are  people,  a  tiny  minority  of  men,  who 
alone  know  wherein  the  common  good  lies,  and,  although 
all  other  men  consider  this  common  good  to  be  evil,  this 
minority,  compelling  all  other  men  to  do  this  evil,  is  able 
to  consider  this  evil  to  be  a  common  good. 

In  this  consists  the  chief  superstition  and  the  chief 
deception,  which  retards  the  motion  of  humanity  toward 
truth  and  the  good.  The  maintenance  of  this  superstition 
and  this  deception  forms  the  aim  of  the  political  sciences 
in  general  and  of  the  so-called  political  economy  in  par- 
ticular. Its  aim  is  to  conceal  from  people  that  condition 
of  subjection  and  of  slavery  in  which  they  are.  The  means 
which  it  employs  for  this  purpose  consist  in  this,  that,  in 
analyzing  the  violence  which  conditions  the  whole  economic 
life  of  the  enslaved,  it  intentionally  recognizes  this  violence 
as  natural  and  inevitable,  and  thus  deceives  people  and 
veils  their  eyes  from  the  real  cause  of  their  wretchedness. 

Slavery  has  long  been  abolished.  It  was  abolished  in 
Rome,  and  in  America,  and  in  our  country,  but  what  has 
been  abolished  is  words,  and  not  facts. 


156  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

Slavery  is  the  liberation  of  self  from  labour  (necessary 
for  the  gi-atification  of  one's  needs),  which  by  means  of 
violence  is  transferred  to  others ;  and  where  there  is  a 
man  who  does  not  work,  not  because  other  people  work 
for  him  for  love's  sake,  but  because  he  is  able  not  to 
work  himself,  but  to  compel  others  to  work  for  him,  there 
is  slavery.  But  where  there  are  people,  as  in  all  European 
societies,  who  by  means  of  violence  exploit  the  labours  of 
thousands  of  men,  and  who  regard  this  as  their  privilege, 
and  other  people,  who  submit  to  the  violence  and  recog- 
nize it  as  their  obligation,  there  slavery  exists  in  terrible 
proportions. 

Slavery  exists.  In  what  does  it  consist  ?  In  that  in 
which  it  has  always  consisted,  and  without  which  it  can 
never  exist :  in  the  violence  of  the  strong  and  armed 
exerted  over  the  weak  and  the  unarmed. 

Slavery  with  its  three  fundamental  methods  of  personal 
violence,  —  of  militarism,  taxation  of  land,  supported  by 
the  militarism,  and  the  tribute  which  is  imposed  on  all 
the  inhabitants  by  means  of  direct  and  indirect  taxes,  and 
which  is  supported  by  the  same  militarism,  —  exists  to- 
day as  it  has  always  existed.  The  only  reason  why  we 
do  not  see  it  is  this,  that  each  of  the  three  forms  of 
slavery  has  received  a  new  justification,  which  shields 
from  us  its  meaning.  The  personal  violence  of  the  armed 
done  to  the  unarmed  has  received  the  justification  of  a 
defence  of  the  country  against  its  imaginary  enemies ;  in 
reality  it  has  the  old  meaning,  namely,  that  of  the  subjec- 
tion of  the  vanquished  by  the  oppressor.  The  violence 
exerted  in  taking  the  land  from  those  who  work  upon 
it  has  received  the  justification  of  a  reward  for  deserts 
respecting  the  imaginary  common  good  and  is  confirmed 
by  the  right  of  inheritance ;  in  reality  it  is  the  same 
despoliation  of  the  land  and  enslavement  of  the  people 
which  was  produced  by  the  army  (the  power).  The  last, 
the   monetary  violence,  the   violence   of    taxation,  —  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  157 

most  powerful  and  most  important  in  modern  times, — 
has  received  the  most  remarkable  justification,  namely, 
this :  people  are  deprived  of  their  property  and  freedom, 
and  of  their  whole  good  in  the  name  of  freedom,  of  the 
common  good.  In  reahty  it  is  nothing  but  the  same 
slavery,  except  that  it  is  impersonal. 

Where  violence  is  exalted  into  a  law,  there  slavery  also 
will  exist.  Whether  the  violence  is  expressed  in  this 
way,  that  the  princes  make  incursions  with  their  retinues, 
killing  women  and  children,  and  giving  the  villages  to 
fire ;  or  whether  the  slave-owners  exact  work  or  money 
from  the  slaves  for  the  land,  and,  in  case  of  arrears,  call 
in  the  aid  of  armed  men ;  or  whether  certain  people  put 
others  under  tribute,  travelling  armed  from  village  to 
village ;  or  whether  the  ministry  of  the  interior  collects 
money  through  governors  and  rural  officers,  and,  in  case 
of  refusal  to  pay,  sends  out  companies  of  soldiers,  —  in 
short,  so  long  as  there  is  violence,  supported  by  bayonets, 
there  will  be  no  distribution  of  wealth  among  people,  but 
the  whole  wealth  will  go  to  the  oppressors. 

George's  project  of  the  nationalization  of  the  land 
serves  as  a  striking  illustration  of  the  truth  of  this  propo- 
sition. George  proposes  that  all  the  land  be  regarded  as 
the  property  of  the  state,  and  so  all  imposts,  whether 
direct  or  indirect,  are  to  be  replaced  by  a  ground  rent, 
that  is,  that  every  man  who  makes  use  of  the  land  shall 
pay  to  the  state  the  value  of  its  rent. 

What  would  happen  ?  Land  slavery  would  be  des- 
troyed within  the  limits  of  the  state,  that  is,  the  land 
would  belong  to  the  state :  England  would  have  its  land, 
America  its  own,  and  so  forth,  —  that  is,  there  would  be 
a  slavery  which  would  be  determined  by  the  amount 
of  land  under  exploitation. 

Maybe  the  condition  of  some  of  the  labourers  (on  the 
land)  would  improve;  but  so  long  as  there  was  left  a 
violent  levy  of  taxes  for  the  rent,  slavery  would  be  left. 


158  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

The  agriculturist,  who  after  a  failure  of  crops  would  be 
unable  to  pay  the  rent,  which  is  exacted  of  him  by  force, 
would  be  compelled,  in  order  not  to  lose  everything,  to 
sell  himself  to  the  man  who  had  the  money. 

If  a  bucket  is  leaky,  there  is  certaiuly  a  hole  in  it.  As 
we  look  at  the  bottom  of  the  bucket,  it  may  appear  to  us 
that  the  water  is  leaking  out  of  several  holes ;  but,  no 
matter  how  much  we  may  stop  up  these  imaginary  holes, 
the  water  will  continue  to  flow.  In  order  to  stop  the 
flow,  it  is  necessary  to  find  the  place  where  the  water 
escapes  from  the  bucket  and  stop  it  from  the  inside.  The 
same  has  to  be  done  with  the  proposed  measures  for 
stopping  the  irregular  distribution  of  wealth,  in  order  to 
stop  the  hole  through  which  the  wealth  of  the  people 
leaks  out.  They  say :  "  Form  labour  unions ;  turn  the 
capital  into  public  property  ;  turn  the  land  into  public 
property  ! "  All  this  is  nothing  but  an  external  stoppage 
of  the  places  through  which  the  water  seems  to  leak.  In 
order  to  stop  the  leakage  of  the  working  men's  wealth, 
which  passes  into  the  hands  of  the  leisure  class,  it  is 
necessary  to  find  the  inside  hole  through  which  this 
leakage  takes  place. 

This  hole  is  the  violence  exerted  by  an  armed  man 
over  one  who  is  not  armed ;  it  is  the  violence  of  the 
army,  which  takes  the  men  away  from  their  labour,  or 
which  despoils  them  of  the  land  and  of  the  products  of 
their  labour.  So  long  as  there  shall  exist  a  single  armed 
man  who  arrogates  to  himself  the  right  to  kill  another, 
there  will  exist  the  irregular  distribution  of  wealth,  that 
is,  slavery. 

Wliat  led  me  into  the  error  that  I  could  help  others  was 
that  I  imagined  that  my  money  was  the  same  kind  of 
money  as  Semen's.     But  that  was  not  true. 

There  exists  a  common  opinion  that  money  represents 
wealth  ;  but  money  is  the  product  of  labour,  and  so  money 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  159 

represents  labour.  This  opinion  is  as  correct  as  that  other 
opinion  that  every  political  organization  is  the  result  of  a 
pact  (contrat  social). 

All  want  to  believe  that  money  is  only  a  medium  of 
the  exchange  of  labour.  I  have  made  some  boots,  you 
have  raised  some  graiu,  he  has  fattened  some  sheep ;  in 
order  to  be  able  more  conveniently  to  exchange  our  arti- 
cles, we  introduce  money,  which  represents  a  correspond- 
ing share  of  labour,  and  by  means  of  it  we  exchange  some 
soles  for  a  brisket  of  mutton  and  ten  pounds  of  flour.  We 
exchange  our  products  through  the  medium  of  the  money, 
and  the  money  of  each  of  us  represents  our  individual 
labour.  That  is  quite  true,  but  only  so  long  as  in  society, 
where  this  exchange  takes  place,  there  has  not  appeared 
the  violence  of  one  man  over  another,  not  only  violence 
to  another  man's  labour,  as  is  the  case  in  war  and  slavery, 
but  also  violence  in  the  defence  of  one's  labour  against 
others.  It  will  be  true  only  in  a  society  whose  members 
fully  execute  the  Christian  law,  in  a  society  where  he 
who  asks  receives  what  he  asks  for,  and  where  they  do 
not  ask  the  aggressor  to  give  back  what  he  has  taken. 
But  as  soon  as  any  violence  is  exerted  in  society,  the 
money  at  once  loses  for  the  owner  its  significance  as  a 
representative  of  labour,  and  assumes  the  meaning  of 
a  right  which  is  not  based  on  labour,  but  on  violence. 

The  moment  there  is  war,  and  one  man  takes  anything 
away  from  another,  the  money  can  no  longer  be  a  repre- 
sentative of  labour ;  the  money  which  the  warrior  gets  for 
the  booty  which  he  sells,  and  which  the  chief  of  the 
warrior  gets,  is  by  no  means  a  product  of  their  labour, 
and  has  an,  entirely  different  meaning  than  the  money 
received  for  work  put  into  making  boots.  So  long  as 
there  are  slave-owners  and  slaves,  as  has  always  been  the 
case  in  the  whole  world,  it  is  just  as  impossible  to  say 
that  money  represents  labour.  The  women  have  woven 
some  hnen,  and  this  they  sell,  and  they  receive  money 


160  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

for  it ;  the  serfs  have  woven  for  the  master,  and  the 
master  sells  the  linen,  and  receives  money  for  it.  Either 
money  is  the  same ;  but  the  first  is  the  product  of  labour, 
the  second  is  the  product  of  violence.  In  the  same  way 
a  stranger  or  my  father  has  made  me  a  present  of  money, 
and  my  father,  giving  it  to  me,  knew,  and  I,  too,  know, 
and  everybody  else  knows,  that  nobody  can  take  this 
money  away  from  me ;  that  if  any  one  should  try  to  take 
it  from  me,  or  even  not  to  return  it  to  me  by  a  set  time, 
at  which  he  promised  to  return  it  to  me,  the  authorities 
would  take  my  part  and  compel  him  by  force  to  return 
the  money  to  me.  And  so  it  is  again  obvious  that  this 
money  can  in  no  way  be  called  a  representative  of  labour 
on  a  par  with  the  money  which  Sem^n  received  for  saw- 
ing wood.  Thus  in  a  society  in  which  there  is  the  least 
violence  which  takes  possession  of  other  people's  money, 
or  which  defends  the  possession  of  money  from  others, 
the  money  cannot  always  be  a  representative  of  labour. 
In  such  a  society  it  is  sometimes  a  representative  of 
labour,  and  sometimes  of  violence. 

Thus  it  would  be  if  there  appeared  even  one  case  of 
violence  exerted  hy  one  man  over  others  among  absolutely 
free  relations  ;  but  now,  when  for  the  accumulation  of 
money  there  have  passed  centuries  of  the  most  varied  forms 
of  violence  ;  when  this  violence  merely  changes  forms  and 
does  not  cease  ;  when,  as  is  acknowledged  by  everybody, 
the  money  itself  in  its  accumulation  forms  violence  ;  when 
money,  as  the  product  of  direct  labour,  forms  but  a  small 
part  of  the  money  formed  from  every  description  of 
violence,  —  now  to  say  that  money  represents  the  labour 
of  him  who  possesses  it  is  an  obvious  delusion  or  a  con- 
scious lie.  We  may  say  that  it  ought  to  be  so,  or  that  it 
is  desirable  that  it  should  be  so,  but  by  no  means  that 
it  is  so. 

Money  represents  labour.  Yes.  Money  represents 
labour ;  but  whose  ?     In  our  society  money  is  only  in  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  161 

very  rarest  cases  a  representative  of  the  labour  of  the 
owner  of  the  money,  and  is  nearly  always  a  representative 
of  the  labour  of  other  people,  past  or  future.  It  is  a  rep- 
resentative of  other  people's  obligations  to  do  work,  as 
established  through  violence. 

In  its  most  precise  and,  at  the  same  time,  most  simple 
definition,  money  is  a  conventional  token  which  gives  the 
right,  or,  more  correctly,  the  possibility,  to  exploit  the 
labour  of  other  people.  In  its  ideal  significance,  money 
ought  to  give  this  right  or  possibility  only  when  it  itself 
serves  as  a  representative  of  labour,  and  money  could  be 
that  in  a  society  where  there  is  no  violence.  But  the 
moment  there  is  any  violence  in  society,  that  is,  the  pos- 
sibility of  exploiting  another  man's  labour  without  one's 
own  work,  this  possibility  of  exploiting  another  man's 
labour,  without  the  determination  of  the  person  over 
whom  this  violence  is  exerted,  is  also  expressed  by 
money. 

A  proprietor  imposes  upon  his  serfs  certain  obligations 
in  kind,  a  certain  number  of  bolts  of  Hnen,  corn,  cattle, 
or  a  corresponding  sum  of  money.  One  farm  furnishes 
cattle,  but  pays  money  in  lieu  of  the  liuen.  The  propri- 
etor takes  a  certain  sum  of  money  only  because  he  knows 
that  for  this  nioney  they  will  make  just  as  many  bolts  of 
linen  for  him  (as  a  rule  he  will  take  a  little  more  so  as  to 
be  sure  that  they  will  always  produce  the  exact  amount) 
and  to  the  proprietor  this  money  obviously  represents  the 
obligation  of  other  people  to  do  work. 

The  peasant  gives  the  money  as  a  claim  against  some 
unknown  person,  and  there  are  many  persons  who  will 
be  willing  for  the  money  to  produce  so  and  so  many  bolts 
of  linen.  The  reason  that  the  people  will  undertake  to 
produce  the  Hnen  is  this,  that  they  have  not  had  time 
to  fatten  their  sheep,  and  they  have  to  pay  money  for  the 
sheep,  and  the  peasant  who  wiU  take  the  money  for 
the  sheep  will  take  it  because  he  has  to  pay  for  the  corn 


162  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

which  did  not  grow  well  this  year.  The  same  thing 
takes  place  in  the  state,  in  the  whole  world. 

A  man  sells  the  product  of  his  present,  past,  or  future 
labour,  sometimes  his  food,  as  a  rule  not  because  the 
money  is  for  him  a  convenience  of  exchange,  —  he  would 
gladly  exchange  without  money,  —  but  because  they 
exact  the  money  from  him  by  force,  as  a  claim  to  his 
own  labour. 

When  the  King  of  Egypt  demanded  labour  from  his 
slaves,  the  slaves  gave  it  all,  but  they  gave  only  their 
past  and  their  present  labour,  —  they  could  not  give  their 
future  labour.  But  with  the  dissemination  of  monetary 
tokeus  and  the  consequent  credit,  it  became  possible  to 
give  up  money  for  future  labours.  With  the  existence 
of  violence  in  society,  money  represents  only  the  possi- 
bility of  a  new  form  of  an  impersonal  slavery,  which 
takes  the  place  of  the  personal  slavery.  A  slave-owner 
has  the  right  to  Peter's,  Ivan's,  Sidor's  labour.  But  the 
owner  of  money,  where  money  is  demanded  of  all,  has 
the  right  to  the  labour  of  all  those  nameless  men  who 
are  in  need  of  money.  Money  does  away  with  all  that 
hard  side  of  slavery,  when  the  owner  knows  his  right 
to  Ivan ;  at  the  same  time  it  does  away  with  all  the 
human  relations  between  the  owner  and  the  slave,  which 
softened  the  hardness  of  personal  slavery. 

I  do  not  say  that  such  a  condition  is,  perhaps,  neces- 
sary for  the  evolution  of  humanity,  for  progress,  and  so 
forth.  I  have  only  tried  to  make  clear  to  myself  the 
concept  of  money  and  of  that  common  error  into  which  I 
had  fallen  when  I  regarded  money  as  the  representative 
of  labour.  I  convinced  myself  by  experience  that  money 
is  not  the  representative  of  labour,  but  in  the  majority  of 
cases  a  representative  of  violence,  or  of  especially  com- 
plex devices  based  on  violence. 

Money  has  in  our  time  completely  lost  that  desirable 
significance  as  a  representative  of  labour ;  such  a  signifi- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  163 

cance  it  has  only  exceptionally,  for  as  a  general  rule  it 
has  become  a  right  or  a  possibility  for  exploiting  the 
labour  of  others. 

The  dissemination  of  money,  of  credit,  and  of  all  kinds 
of  monetary  tokens  more  and  more  confirms  this  mean- 
ing of  money.  Money  is  the  possibility  or  the  right  to 
exploit  the  labours  of  others.  Money  is  a  new  form  of 
slavery,  which  differs  from  the  old  only  in  being  imper- 
sonal, and  in  freeing  people  from  all  the  human  relations 
of  the  slave. 

Money  is  money,  a  value  which  is  always  equal  to 
itself,  which  is  always  considered  absolutely  regular  and 
legal,  and  the  use  of  which  is  not  considered  immoral,  as 
the  use  of  the  right  of  slavery  was  considered  to  be. 

In  my  youth  it  became  fashionable  in  clubs  to  play 
lotto.  Everybody  rushed  to  play  it,  and,  as  they  said, 
many  persons  were  ruined,  families  were  made  unfortu- 
nate, other  people's  Crown  money  was  gambled  away, 
and  men  shot  themselves,  and  the  game  was  prohibited 
and  is  prohibited  until  this  day. 

I  used  to  see,  I  remember,  unsentimental  old  gamblers, 
who  would  tell  me  that  this  game  was  particularly  agree- 
able in  that  a  person  did  not  see  whom  in  particular  he 
was  beating,  as  is  the  case  in  other  games  ;  the  lackey 
did  not  even  bring  money,  but  only  chips,  and  each 
person  lost  but  a  small  stake,  and  his  grief  could  not  be 
observed.  The  same  is  true  of  roulette,  which  is  every- 
where prohibited  for  good  reasons. 

The  same  is  true  of  money.  I  have  a  magic  never- 
failing  rouble ;  I  cut  off  the  coupons  and  am  removed 
from  all  the  affairs  of  the  world.  Whom  am  I  harming  ? 
I  am  a  most  innocuous  and  kindly  man.  But  this  is 
only  playing  lotto  or  roulette,  where  I  do  not  see  the 
man  who  shoots  himself  on  account  of  his  losses,  while 
it  furnishes  me  those  little  coupons  which  I  regularly 
cut  off  at  a  right  angle  from  the  bonds. 


164  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

I  have  done  uothiug  and  will  do  nothing  but  cut  off 
those  little  coupons,  and  I  believe  firmly  that  money  is 
a  representative  of  labour.  How  strange !  And  they 
talk  of  insane  persons !  What  madness  can  be  more 
terrible  than  this  ?  A  clever  and  learned  man,  who  in 
all  other  things  is  sensible,  lives  senselessly  and  eases  his 
conscience  by  not  enunciating  the  one  word  which  it  is 
necessary  to  say  that  there  may  be  a  meaning  to  his 
reflection,  aud  considers  himself  righteous.  The  little 
coupons  are  representatives  of  labour  !  Of  labour  !  Yes, 
but  whose  labour  ?  Obviously  not  his  who  owns  it,  but 
his  who  works. 

Money  is  the  same  as  slavery  ;  it  has  the  same  aims 
and  the  same  consequences.  Its  aim  is  the  liberation  of 
self  from  the  original  law,  as  a  profound  writer  from  the 
masses  has  correctly  said,  —  from  the  natural  law  of  life, 
as  we  call  it,  from  the  law  of  personal  labour  for  the 
gratification  of  one's  wants.  The  consequences  of  money 
are  the  same  as  those  of  slavery  were  for  the  owner :  the 
breeding  aud  invention  of  new  and  endlessly  new  wants, 
which  can  never  be  satisfied,  pampered  wretchedness, 
debauch ;  and  for  the  slaves  :  the  oppression  of  man,  his 
reduction  to  the  level  of  an  animal. 

Money  is  a  new  and  terrible  form  of  slavery,  and,  like 
the  old  form  of  personal  slavery,  it  corrupts  both  the 
slave  and  the  slave-owner,  but  it  is  even  much  worse 
because  it  frees  the  slave  and  the  slave-owner  from  per- 
sonal human  relations. 


XXII. 

I  HAVE  always  to  marvel  at  the  words  frequently  re- 
peated :  "  Yes,  that  is  so  in  theory,  but  how  is  it  in  prac- 
tice ? "  Just  as  though  theory  were  a  series  of  fine  words 
which  are  needed  for  conversation,  but  not  that  practice, 
that  is,  all  activity,  should  inevitably  be  based  upon  it. 
There  must  have  existed  a  terriljle  lot  of  stupid  theories 
in  the  world,  if  such  a  remarkable  reflection  has  passed 
into  use.  Theory  is  what  a  man  thinks  about  a  subject, 
and  practice  is  what  he  does.  How,  then,  can  a  man 
think  that  it  is  necessary  to  do  something  in  a  certain 
way,  and  do  the  opposite  ?  If  the  theory  of  bread-baking 
is  this,  that  the  dough  has  first  to  be  made  and  then  be 
left  to  rise,  then,  outside  of  crazy  men,  no  one  who  knows 
the  theory  will  do  the  opposite.  But  it  has  become  a 
fashion  with  us  to  say  that  this  is  a  theory,  and  how  is  it 
in  practice  ? 

In  the  subject  which  interests  me  there  has  been  con- 
firmed what  I  have  always  thought,  that  the  practice 
inevitably  follows  from  the  theory  :  not  that  it  justifies  it, 
but  that  it  cannot  be  anything  else ;  that,  if  I  have  come 
to  understand  the  matter  of  which  I  have  been  thinking, 
I  cannot  do  it  otherwise  than  in  the  manner  in  which  I 
understand  it. 

I  wanted  to  help  the  poor  only  because  I  had  money 
and  because  I  shared  the  general  confidence  that  money 
was  a  representative  of  labour,  or  in  general  something 
lawful  and  good.  But,  when  I  began  to  give  the  money, 
I  saw  that  what  I  was  giving  was  the  notes  against  the 
poor  which  I  had  collected,  and  that  I  was  doing  what 

165 


166  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

many  proprietors  used  to  do  when  they  compelled  certain 
serfs  to  serve  others.  I  saw  that  every  use  of  money  — 
whether  it  be  the  purchase  of  something,  or  the  transmis- 
sion of  the  money  to  another  for  nothing  —  was  the 
sending  to  protest  of  a  note  against  the  poor,  or  the  trans- 
ference of  the  same  to  another  person  for  the  purpose  of 
sending  it  to  protest  against  the  poor.  And  so  I  clearly 
saw  the  insipidity  which  I  was  trying  to  commit,  —  to 
help  the  poor  by  exacting  from  the  poor.  I  saw  that 
money  in  itself  not  only  failed  to  be  good,  but  was  also 
an  obvious  evil  which  deprived  people  of  their  chief  good, 
of  labour,  and  of  the  use  of  this,  their  own  labour,  and 
that  I  was  unable  to  transmit  this  good  to  any  one, 
because  I  was  myself  deprived  of  it :  I  have  no  labour  and 
am  not  so  fortunate  as  to  make  use  of  my  own  labour. 

One  would  think  that  there  was  nothing  peculiar  in 
this  reflection  as  to  what  money  is.  But  this  reflection, 
which  I  made  not  for  the  mere  sake  of  reflecting,  but  in 
order  to  solve  the  question  of  my  life,  my  suffering,  was 
for  me  an  answer  to  the  question  as  to  what  should  be 
done. 

The  moment  I  understood  what  wealth  was,  what 
money  was,  it  not  only  became  clear  to  me  what  I  had 
to  do,  but  it  also  became  clear  and  indubitable  to  me 
what  all  others  ouglit  to  do,  and  that  they  inevitably 
would  do  it.  In  reality  I  understood  nothing  but  what 
I  had  known  long  ago,  —  the  truth  which  had  been  trans- 
mitted to  men  since  the  most  remote  times  by  Buddha, 
and  Isaiah,  and  Lao-tse,  and  Socrates,  and  was  particu- 
larly clearly  and  indubitably  transmitted  to  us  by  Jesus 
Christ  and  his  predecessor,  John  the  Baptist.  In  reply  to 
men's  questions  as  to  what  they  should  do,  he  answered 
simply,  briefly,  and  clearly,  He  that  hath  two  coats,  let 
him  impart  to  him  that  hath  none  ;  and  he  that  hath  meat, 
let  him  do  likewise  (Luke  iii.  10,  11). 

The  same,  with  greater  clearness  and  frequently,  was 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  167 

said  by  Christ.  He  said,  Blessed  are  the  poor,  and  woe 
to  the  rich.  He  said  that  one  could  not  serve  God  and 
Mammon.  He  forbade  his  disciples  to  take,  not  only- 
money,  but  even  two  coats.  He  said  to  the  rich  young 
man  that  he  could  not  enter  into  the  Idngdom  of  God 
because  he  was  rich,  aud  that  it  was  easier  for  a  camel  to 
pass  through  tlie  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man 
to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  He  said  that  he  who 
would  not  leave  everything,  his  house,  and  children,  and 
fields,  in  order  to  follow  him,  was  not  his  disciple.  He 
spoke  a  parable  about  the  rich  man  who  did  no  wrong, 
like  our  own  rich,  but  dressed  himself  w^ell  and  ate  and 
drank  good  food,  and  who  thus  lost  his  soul,  and  about 
poor  Lazarus,  who  did  no  good,  but  who  saved  himself 
merely  by  being  poor. 

That  truth  was  sufficiently  well  known  to  me,  but  the 
fallacious  teachings  of  the  world  had  dimmed  it  so  that 
it  had  become  for  me  a  theory,  in  the  sense  which  people 
are  fond  of  ascribing  to  the  word,  that  is,  idle  words. 
But  as  soon  as  I  succeeded  in  destroying  in  my  conscious- 
ness the  sophisms  of  the  worldly  teaching,  the  theory 
blended  with  the  practice,  and  the  reality  of  my  life  and 
of  the  life  of  all  men  became  its  inevitable  consequence. 

I  understood  that  man,  in  addition  to  his  life  for  his 
personal  good,  must  inevitably  also  serve  the  good  of 
other  men ;  that,  if  we  are  to  take  an  example  from 
the  life  of  animals,  as  certain  people  are  fond  of  doing, 
defending  violence  and  struggle  by  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence in  the  animal  kingdom,  the  comparison  ought  to  be 
taken  from  among  the  social  animals,  such  as  the  bees, 
and  that,  therefore,  man,  to  say  nothing  of  his  innate  love 
for  his  neighbour,  by  reason  and  by  his  ovsn  nature  is 
called  to  serve  other  people  aud  the  common  human  ends. 
I  understood  that  the  natural  law  of  man  was  only  that 
which  made  it  possible  for  him  to  fulfil  his  destiny, 
and  so  be  happy.     I  understood  that  this  law  had  been 


168  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

impaired  by  this,  that  men,  like  the  phmderer  bees,  free 
themselves  through  violence  from  labour,  and  exploit  the 
labour  of  others,  directing  this  labour,  not  to  a  common 
aim,  but  to  the  personal  gratification  of  multiplying 
passions  (lusts),  and  that,  like  the  plunderer  bees,  they 
perish  from  this.  I  understood  that  men's  misfortune 
was  due  to  the  slavery  in  which  one  set  of  men  held  other 
men.  I  understood  that  the  slavery  of  our  time  was  pro- 
duced by  the  violence  of  militarism,  by  the  appropriation 
of  land,  and  the  exaction  of  money.  And,  having  come 
to  understand  the  meaning  of  all  three  instruments  of 
the  new  slavery,  I  could  not  help  but  wish  to  be  freed 
from  a  participation  in  it. 

When  I  was  a  slave-owner,  possessing  serfs,  and  com- 
prehended the  immorality  of  this  situation,  I  tried  at 
that  time,  in  company  with  other  people  who  understood 
it,  to  free  myself  from  that  situation.  My  liberation  con- 
sisted in  this,  that,  as  I  considered  myself  immoral,  I 
tried,  so  long  as  I  was  not  able  to  free  myself  completely 
from  this  situation,  to  urge  as  little  as  possible  my  rights 
as  a  slave-owner,  and  to  live  and  let  the  people  live  in 
such  a  way  as  though  these  rights  did  not  exist,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  use  every  effort  in  impressing  the 
other  slave-owners  with  the  lawlessness  and  inhumanity 
of  their  imaginary  rights. 

I  cannot  help  but  do  the  same  in  respect  to  the  present 
slavery :  as  little  as  possible  urge  my  rights,  so  long  as  I 
am  not  able  completely  to  renounce  these  rights,  which  are 
given  to  me  by  land-ownership  and  by  money,  and  which 
are  supported  by  the  violence  of  mihtarism,  and  at  the 
same  time  with  all  my  means  impress  upon  other  people 
the  lawlessness  and  inhumanity  of  these  imaginary  rights. 
The  participation  in  slavery  on  the  side  of  the  slave-owner 
consists  in  the  exploitation  of  other  people's  labour,  no 
matter  whether  the  slavery  is  based  on  my  right  to  the 
slave,  or  on  my  ownership  of  land,  or  on  money. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  169 

And  so,  if  a  man  indeed  dislikes  slavery  and  does  not 
wish  to  be  a  participant  in  it,  the  first  thing  he  will  do 
will  be  this,  that  he  w411  not  make  use  of  other  people's 
labour,  either  through  the  ownership  of  land,  or  through 
serving  the  government,  or  through  money. 

But  the  refusal  to  employ  any  of  the  means  in  use  for 
the  purpose  of  exploiting  other  people's  labour  will  inevi- 
tably bring  such  a  man  to  the  necessity,  on  the  one  hand, 
of  curtailing  his  needs,  and,  on  the  other,  of  doing  for 
himself  what  formerly  others  did  for  him. 

This  simple  and  inevitable  inference  enters  into  all  the 
details  of  my  hfe,  modifies  it  all,  and  at  once  frees  me 
from  those  moral  sufferings  which  I  used  to  experience 
at  the  sight  of  the  suffering  and  tlie  debauchery  of  men, 
and  at  once  destroys  all  those  three  causes  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  helping  the  poor,  at  which  I  arrived  in  seeking 
the  causes  for  my  failure. 

The  first  cause  w^as  the  crowding  of  people  into  the 
cities  and  the  swallowing  up  iu  the  cities  of  the  Vv'ealth 
of  the  country.  A  man  need  but  have  the  desire  not  to 
exploit  the  labours  of  others  by  means  of  serving  the 
government  and  owning  land  and  money,  and  therefore  to 
satisfy  his  needs  himself  to  the  best  of  his  strength  and 
abihty,  in  order  that  it  should  never  occur  to  him  to  leave 
the  village  (in  which  it  is  easiest  of  all  to  satisfy  one's 
wants)  for  the  city,  where  everything  is  the  product  of 
somebody  else's  labour,  where  everything  has  to  be 
bought ;  and  then,  in  the  country,  a  man  will  be  able 
to  help  the  needy,  and  he  will  not  experience  that  feeling 
of  helplessness  which  I  experienced  in  the  city,  when  I 
tried  to  help  people,  not  by  means  of  my  own  labour,  but 
by  that  of  others. 

The  second  cause  was  the  disunion  between  the  rich 
and  the  poor.  A  man  need  but  wash  not  to  exploit  other 
people's  labour  by  means  of  service,  of  ownership  of  land, 
and   of    money,  in  order  to  be  put  to  the  necessity  of 


170  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

satisfying  his  own  wants,  and  immediately  the  wall  will 
be  destroyed  which  separates  him  from  the  working  people, 
and  he  will  blend  with  them,  and  will  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  them,  and  will  have  the  possibility  of  help- 
ing them. 

The  third  cause  was  shame,  which  was  based  on  the 
consciousness  of  the  immorality  of  my  possession  of  that 
money  with  which  I  wanted  to  help  others.  We  need 
but  wish  not  to  exploit  other  people's  labour  by  means 
of  service,  of  ownership  of  laud,  and  of  money,  and  we 
shall  never  have  that  superfluous  fool's  money,  the  presence 
of  which  with  me  has  provoked  in  people  who  have  no 
money  certain  demands  which  I  could  not  satisfy,  and  in 
me  —  a  feeling  of  the  consciousness  of  my  unrighteousness. 


XXIII. 

I  SAW  that  the  cause  of  men's  suffering  and  debauchery 
was  this,  that  certain  people  were  in  slavery  to  others, 
and  so  I  drew  the  simple  conclusion  that,  if  I  wished  to 
help  others,  I  must  first  of  all  stop  causing  those  mis- 
fortunes which  I  wish  to  assist,  that  is,  not  take  part  in 
the  enslavement  of  men.  But  what  had  been  urging  me 
to  enslave  people  was  the  fact  that  I  had  been  accustomed 
from  childhood  not  to  work,  but  to  make  use  of  the 
labours  of  other  people,  and  that  I  had  been  living  in  a 
society  which  not  only  was  used  to  this  enslavement  of 
other  people,  but  also  justified  this  enslavement  witli  all 
kinds  of  clever  and  insipid  sophisms.  I  drew  the  follow- 
ing simple  conclusion  that,  in  order  that  I  might  not 
cause  people's  suffering  and  debauchery,  I  must  as  little 
as  possible  make  use  of  the  work  of  others,  and  myself 
work  as  much  as  possible.  By  a  long  path  I  came  to  the 
inevitable  conclusion  which  a  thousand  years  ago  was 
made  by  the  Chinese  in  this  utterance :  "  If  there  is  one 
idle  man,  there  is  another  who  is  starving."  I  came  to 
this  simple  and  natural  conclusion  that,  if  I  pitied  that 
worn-out  horse  which  I  was  riding,  the  first  thing  I  ought 
to  do,  if  I  really  was  sorry  for  it,  was  to  get  off  and 
walk. 

This  answer,  which  gives  such  complete  satisfaction  to 
the  moral  feeling,  begged  for  my  recognition,  and  begs 
for  the  recognition  of  all  of  us,  but  we  do  not  see  it  and 
look  aside. 

In  our  search  after  a  cure  for  our  social  diseases  we 

look   about  on   all    sides,  —  in   governmental,  and   anti- 

171 


172  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

goverDmental,  and  scientific,  and  philautliropic  supersti- 
tions, and  we  do  not  see  what  strikes  our  eyes. 

We  use  the  vessel  in  the  house,  and  want  others  to 
carry  it  out,  and  pretend  that  we  suffer  for  them,  and 
want  to  make  it  easier  for  them,  and  invent  all  kinds  of 
devices,  except  the  simplest  one,  that  of  carrying  it  out 
ourselves,  if  we  wish  to  use  it  in  the  house,  or  else  going 
back  of  the  barn. 

For  him  who  sincerely  suffers  in  seeing  the  men  who 
surround  us  suffer,  there  is  a  very  clear,  simple,  and  easy 
means,  the  only  possible  one  for  the  cure  of  the  evils 
which  surround  us  and  for  the  recognition  of  the  lawful- 
ness of  our  life,  —  the  same  that  John  the  Baptist  gave  to 
the  question.  What  shall  we  do  then  ?  and  which  Christ 
confirmed  :  not  to  have  more  than  one  garment  and  not  to 
have  money,  that  is,  not  to  make  use  of  the  labours  of 
others,  and  so  first  of  all  to  do  with  our  own  hands  what 
we  are  able  to  do. 

That  is  so  simple  and  so  clear.  But  that  is  simple  and 
clear  when  the  wants  are  clear  and  simple,  and  when  a 
man  himself  is  fresh  and  not  corrupted  to  the  core  through 
laziness  and  idleness.  I  live  in  the  village,  lying  on  the 
oven,  and  order  my  debtor  next  door  to  chop  wood  and 
make  a  fire  in  the  oven.  It  is  very  clear  that  I  am  lazy 
and  am  taking  my  neighbour  away  from  his  work  ;  and 
I  shall  feel  ashamed,  and  it  will  be  tiresome  for  me  to 
lie  all  the  time,  and  if  my  muscles  are  strong  and  I  am 
accustomed  to  work,  I  shall  go  and  chop  the  wood  myself. 

But  the  offence  of  slavery  in  all  kinds  of  forms  has 
existed  so  long ;  so  many  artificial  wants  have  grown 
up  on  it ;  so  many  people  in  various  stages  of  habits  as 
regaids  these  wants  are  interrelated ;  men  have  been  so 
spoiled  and  so  pampered  for  generations ;  such  complex 
temptations  and  justifications  in  their  luxury  and  their 
idleness  have  been  invented  by  people,  that  for  a  man 
who  is  at  the  top  of  the  ladder  of  idle  people  it  is  far 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  173 

from  being  so  easy  to  understand  his  sin,  as  for  a  peasant 
who  compels  his  neighbour  to  make  a  fire  in  his  oven. 

For  people  who  are  on  the  uppermost  rung  of  this 
ladder  it  is  terribly  hard  to  understand  what  it  is  that 
is  demanded  of  them.  Their  heads  are  dizzy  from  the 
height  of  that  ladder  of  lie  on  which  they  stand,  when 
they  behold  that  spot  on  the  earth  to  which  they  must 
descend  in  order  to  begin  their  life,  not  well,  but  only  not 
entirely  inhumanely ;  and  it  is  from  this  that  the  simple 
and  clear  truth  seems  so  terrible  to  them. 

To  a  man  with  ten  servants,  liveries,  coachmen,  a  chef, 
pictures,  pianos,  it  will  appear  strange  and  even  ridiculous 
to  do  what  is  the  simplest  and  the  first  action  of  each 
man,  not  necessarily  a  good  man,  but  one  who  is  not  an 
animal :  to  chop  his  own  wood,  with  which  his  food  is 
prepared  and  which  furnishes  him  heat ;  to  clean  his 
own  overshoes  or  boots,  with  which  he  has  carelessly 
stepped  into  the  mud ;  to  fetch  his  own  water,  with 
which  he  makes  his  ablutions,  and  to  carry  out  the  dirty 
water  in  which  he  has  washed  himself. 

But,  besides  the  very  remoteness  of  people  from  the 
truth,  there  is  also  another  cause  which  keeps  people 
from  seeing  the  obligatoriness  for  them  of  the  simplest 
and  most  natural  personal  physical  work :  it  is  the  com- 
plexity, the  interworking  of  the  conditions,  of  the  advan- 
tages of  all  people  who  are  connected  with  one  another,  in 
which  a  rich  man  lives. 

This  morning  I  went  out  into  the  corridor  where  the 
fires  are  made  in  the  stoves.  A  peasant  was  making  a 
fire  in  the  stove  which  heats  my  son's  room.  I  went  in 
to  see  him :  he  was  asleep.  It  was  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  It  was  a  holiday,  and  so  the  excuse,  —  there 
were  no  lessons. 

The  smooth-looking,  eighteen-year-old  lad  with  a  beard, 
having  eaten  a  great  deal  in  the  evening,  is  sleeping  until 
eleven  o'clock,  but  the  peasant,  who  is  of  his  age,  got  up 


174  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

in  the  morning,  has  finished  a  lot  of  work,  and  is  making 
a  tire  in  the  teuth  stove,  but  he  is  asleep.  "  If  only  the 
peasant  did  not  make  a  fire  in  his  stove,  in  order  to  warm 
up  his  sleek,  lazy  body  ! "  I  thought.  But  immediately  I 
recalled  that  this  stove  warmed  also  the  room  of  the 
stewardess,  a  woman  of  forty  years  of  age,  who  the  night 
before  had  worked  until  three  o'clock  in  the  night,  in 
order  to  get  everything  ready  for  the  supper,  which  my 
son  also  ate,  and  had  cleaned  away  the  dishes,  and  still 
had  got  up  at  seven  o'clock.  The  peasant  is  making  the 
fire  for  her,  too.  And  the  lazy  fellow  is  getting  his  heat, 
which  is  to  be  put  down  to  her  account. 

It  is  true,  the  advantages  of  all  men  are  interwoven, 
but  even  without  any  prolonged  calculation  the  conscience 
of  each  man  tells  him  on  whose  side  is  the  labour,  and  on 
whose  the  idleness.  But  it  is  not  merely  conscience  that 
tells ;  it  is  the  ledger  that  shows  it  in  the  clearest  manner 
possible.  The  more  money  one  spends,  the  more  he  causes 
others  to  work  for  him  ;  the  less  he  spends,  the  more  he 
works. 

And  industry,  and  public  undertakings,  and  finally  the 
most  terrible  of  words,  —  culture,  and  the  evolution  of 
the  sciences  and  arts  ? 


XXIV. 

In  March  of  last  year  I  returned  home  late  in  the  even- 
ing. As  I  turned  from  Ziibov  Lane  into  Khamovnicheski 
Lane,  I  saw  some  black  spots  in  the  suow  of  Virgin  Field. 
Something  was  moving  about  in  that  place.  I  should 
have  paid  no  attention  to  this,  if  a  policeman  who  was 
standing  at  the  entrance  of  the  lane  had  not  called  out 
in  the  direction  of  the  black  spots : 

"  Vasili,  why  don't  you  come  along  ?  " 

"  She  won't  go !  "  a  voice  answered  from  there,  and 
thereupon  the  black  spots  moved  toward  the  policeman. 

I  stopped  to  ask  the  policeman  what  it  was.  He 
said: 

"  They  took  in  the  girls  of  Ezhanov  House  and  led 
them  to  the  station,  but  this  one  fell  behind,  and  will 
not  move." 

A  janitor  in  a  sheepskin  coat  was  leading  her.  She 
was  walking  in  front,  and  he  kept  pushing  her  from 
behind.  All  of  us,  the  janitor,  the  policeman,  and  I, 
were  wearing  our  winter  furs,  but  she  had  only  a  skirt 
on.  In  the  darkness  I  could  make  out  a  brown  dress, 
and  a  kerchief  on  her  head  and  neck.  She  was  small  of 
stature,  like  an  abortion :  her  legs  were  short,  and  her 
figure  was  out  of  proportion,  broad  and  unshapely. 

"  You,  wench,  keep  us  standing  here.  Go  on,  I  say  ! 
I'll  teach  you  ! "  shouted  the  policeman. 

He  was   evidently  getting  tired,  and  annoyed  at  her. 

She  made  a  few  steps,  and  stopped  again.    The  old  janitor, 

a  good-natured  man  (I  know  him),  pulled  her  hand. 

"  Come  now,  go  on  !  "  he  pretended  to  be  angry. 

175 


176       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  1 

She  tottered  and  began  to  speak  with  a  wheezing  voice. 
In  every  sound  there  was  a  false  note,  a  snoring,  and  a 
squeak. 

"  Don't  push  me  !     I'll  get  there  ! " 

"  You  will  freeze  to  death,"  said  the  janitor. 

"  The  kind  I  am  do  not  freeze,  —  I  am  of  the  warm 
kind." 

She  meant  to  be  jesting,  but  her  words  sounded  hke 
scolding.  Near  a  lamp-post  which  is  not  far  from  the 
gate  of  our  house  she  stopped  again,  leaning,  almost 
throwing  herself  on  the  fence,  and  began  to  rummage 
in  her  skirts  with  her  awkward,  frosted  hands.  Again 
they  shouted  to  her,  but  she  only  gurgled,  and  continued 
doing  something.  In  one  hand  she  held  a  cigarette  bent 
into  an  arc,  and  in  the  other  she  had  some  matches.  I 
stopped  behind  her ;  I  felt  ashamed  to  pass  by  her,  and 
yet  ashamed  to  stand  and  gaze.  Finally  I  made  up  my 
mind  and  went  up  to  her. 

She  was  lying  with  her  shoulder  against  the  fence, 
and  uselessly  kept  striking  matches  against  the  fence,  and 
throwing  them  away.  I  scanned  her  face.  She  was 
indeed  an  abortion,  but,  as  I  thought,  an  old  woman,  —  I 
gave  her  thirty  years.  The  colour  of  her  face  was  sallow  ; 
her  eyes,  smaU,  turbid,  bloodshot ;  her  nose  knob-shaped  ; 
her  lips  crooked,  slavering,  and  sunken  at  the  corners ; 
and  a  short  strand  of  dry  hair  peeped  out  from  under- 
neath her  kerchief.  Her  waist  was  long  and  flat,  and 
her  arms  and  legs  were  short.  I  stopped  opposite  her.  She 
looked  at  me  and  smiled,  as  though  she  knew  everything 
I  was  thinking  about. 

I  felt  that  I  had  to  say  something  to  her.  I  wanted 
to  show  her  that  I  was  sorry  for  her. 

"  Have  you  any  parents  ?  "  I  asked. 

She  laughed  hoarsely,  then  suddenly  stopped,  and 
raising  her  eyebrows,  gazed  at  me. 

"  Have  you  any  parents  ?  "  I  repeated. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  177 

She  smiled  with  an  expression  which  seemed  to  say : 
"  What  makes  him  trouble  himself  to  ask  me  ? " 

"  I  have  a  mother,"  she  said.     "  What  is  that  to  you  ? " 

"  And  how  old  are  you  ?  " 

"  Going  on  sixteen,"  she  said,  replying  readily,  evidently 
to  a  habitual  question. 

"  March  !  Yon  make  me  freeze,  —  the  devil  take  you  ! " 
shouted  the  policemaD  ;  and  she  tottered  away  from  the 
fence,  and,  swaying  to  and  fro,  went  down  Khamovnicheski 
Lane  to  the  station,  while  I  turned  into  the  gate  and  went 
home,  where  I  asked  whether  my  daughters  had  returned. 
I  was  told  that  they  had  been  to  an  evening  entertain- 
ment, had  had  a  good  time,  and  were  back  home,  asleep. 

The  next  morning  I  wanted  to  go  to  the  police  station 
to  find  out  what  became  of  that  unfortunate  woman,  and 
I  got  ready  to  go  quite  early,  when  I  received  the  visit  of 
one  of  those  unfortunate  men  of  the  gentry  who  in  their 
weakness  stray  from  their  lordly  life  and  now  rise  and 
now  fall  again.  I  had  known  him  for  three  years.  Dur- 
ing these  three  years  he  had  several  times  squandered 
everything  he  had,  even  the  garments  on  his  back ;  just 
such  a  misfortune  had  befallen  him  lately,  and  for  the 
time  being  he  passed  his  nights  in  Rzhanov  House,  in  a 
night  lodging  apartment,  and  in  the  daytime  came  to  see 
me.  He  met  me  as  I  was  going  out,  and,  without  listening 
to  what  I  had  to  say,  began  to  tell  me  what  had  happened 
in  the  night  in  Rzhanov  House.  He  did  not  half  finish 
his  story ;  he,  an  old  man  who  had  seen  all  manner  of 
people,  suddenly  burst  out  weeping  and  sobbing,  and, 
when  he  stopped,  he  turned  his  face  to  the  wall.  Every- 
thing he  told  me  was  an  absolute  truth.  I  verified  his 
story  on  the  spot,  and  learned  some  new  details,  which  I 
shall  not  give  with  the  story. 

In  the  night  lodging  apartment,  in  the  lower  story, 
Number  32,  in  which  my  friend  stayed,  there  was,  among 
the  number  of  transient  inmates,  men  and  women,  who 


178  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

come  together  with  one  another  for  five  kopeks,  a  laun- 
dress, of  about  thirty  years  of  age,  a  blond,  quiet,  orderly, 
but  sickly  woman.  The  landlady  is  the  paramour  of  a 
boatman.  In  the  summer  her  cohabiter  keeps  a  boat,  and 
in  the  winter  they  make  a  hving  by  letting  the  room  to 
night  lodgers,  —  three  kopeks  without  a  pillow,  and  five 
kopeks  with  a  pillow.  The  laundress  had  lived  there  for 
several  months,  and  was  a  quiet  woman ;  but  of  late  they 
began  to  dislike  her,  because  she  coughed  and  did  not  let 
the  inmates  sleep.  Especially  a  half-crazy  old  woman  of 
eighty  years,  who  was  also  a  constant  inmate  of  this 
apartment,  took  a  dislike  to  the  laundress,  and  nagged  her 
to  death,  because  she  would  not  let  her  sleep  and  kept 
clearing  her  throat  all  night  long,  like  a  sheep.  The 
laundress  kept  quiet,  —  she  was  in  debt  for  her  lodging 
and  felt  guilty,  and  so  she  had  to  be  quiet. 

She  went  less  and  less  frequently  to  work,  her  strength 
gave  out,  and  so  she  could  not  pay  the  landlady ;  the  last 
week  she  did  not  go  to  work  at  all,  and  with  her  cough- 
ing only  poisoned  the  lives  of  all,  especially  of  the  old 
woman,  who  did  not  go  out  herself.  Four  days  before, 
the  landlady  had  refused  to  give  her  lodging :  she  was 
owing  six  dimes,  did  not  pay  her  rent,  and  there  was  no 
hope  that  she  would  pay  it ;  and  the  cots  were  all  occu- 
pied, and  the  lodgers  complained  of  her  coughing. 

When  the  landlady  refused  to  give  lodging  to  the 
laundress  and  told  her  to  leave  the  room,  if  she  did  not 
pay,  the  old  woman  was  glad  and  pushed  the  laundress 
out-of-doors.  The  laundress  went  away,  but  came  back 
an  hour  later,  and  the  landlady  did  not  have  the  heart  to 
drive  her  away  again.  "  Where  shall  I  go  ? "  said  the 
laundress.  But  on  the  third  day  the  landlady's  paramour, 
a  Muscovite  who  knew  what  was  what,  went  for  a  police- 
man. The  pohceman,  with  a  sabre  and  a  pistol  on  a  red 
cord,  came  to  the  apartment  and,  politely  uttering  civil 
words,  led  the  laundress  out-of-doors. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  179 

It  was  a  clear,  sunshiny,  but  cold  March  day.  Eunlets 
were  flowing,  and  janitors  were  chopping  wood.  The 
public  sleighs  leaped  over  the  crusted  snow  and  screeched 
over  the  stones.  The  laundress  went  up-hill  on  the 
sunny  side,  reached  a  church,  and  sat  down  at  the  portals 
of  the  church,  on  the  sunny  side.  But  when  the  sun 
began  to  go  down  behind  the  houses  and  the  puddles 
were  sheeted  with  ice,  the  laundress  began  to  feel  cold 
and  chilly.  She  got  up  and  pulled  herself  along. 
Whither  ?  Home,  to  that  only  home  in  which  she  had 
lived  of  late.  Before  she  reached  the  house,  resting  on 
her  way,  it  grew  dark.  She  went  up  to  the  gate,  turned 
into  it,  slipped,  groaned,  and  fell  down. 

A  man,  another  passed.  "  No  doubt  drunk."  Another 
passed.  He  stumbled  over  the  laundress,  and  said  to  the 
janitor :  "  A  drunken  woman  is  wallowing  at  the  gate,  — 
I  almost  broke  my  head  falling  over  her ;  take  her  away, 
or  do  something  ! " 

The  janitor  went.  The  laundress  was  dead.  That  was 
what  my  friend  told  me.  People  may  think  that  I  have 
picked  out  the  facts,  —  the  meeting  with  a  fifteen-year- 
old  prostitute  and  the  story  of  this  laundress  ;  but  you 
must  not  think  so :  that  actually  happened  in  one  night 
in  March  of  1884,  though  I  do  not  remember  the  date. 

And  so,  after  hearing  my  friend's  story,  I  went  to  the 
police  station  in  order  to  go  from  there  to  Rzhanov  House, 
to  find  out  the  details  of  the  story  about  this  laundress. 
The  weather  was  fine,  the  sun  shone,  and  again  could  the 
running  water  be  seen  through  the  stars  of  the  night  frost 
in  the  shade,  while  in  Khamo\'niche8ki  Square  everything 
melted  in  the  sun,  and  the  water  ran.  A  noise  came  up 
from  the  river.  The  trees  of  Neskiichni  Garden  could  be 
seen  in  the  blue  distance  across  the  river ;  the  browned 
sparrows,  unnoticeable  in  winter,  struck  one's  eyes  with 
their  mirth ;  men,  too,  seemed  to  wish  to  be  merry,  but 
thev  had  all  too  many  cares.     One  could  hear  the  ringing 


18d  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

of  bells,  and  against  the  background  of  these  blending 
sounds  could  be  heard  the  sounds  of  firing  in  the  barracks, 
the  whistling  of  rifle-balls,  and  their  pinging  against  the 
target. 

I  came  to  the  police  station.  Here  a  few  armed  men, 
policemen,  took  me  to  their  chief.  He,  too,  was  armed 
with  a  sabre  and  a  pistol,  and  was  busy  giving  orders 
about  a  tattered,  shivering  old  man,  who  was  standing 
before  him  and  from  weakness  was  unable  to  answer  the 
questions  put  to  him.  Having  finished  his  business,  with 
the  old  man,  he  turned  to  me.  I  asked  him  about  the 
girl  of  the  evening  before.  At  first  he  listened  attentively 
CO  me,  and  then  smOed,  both  because  I  did  not  know  the 
regulation  about  taking  them  to  the  police  station,  and 
especially  because  I  was  surprised  at  her  youth. 

"Why,  there  are  some  of  twelve  years,  and  lots  of 
thirteen  and  fourteen,"  he  said,  cheerfully. 

In- reply  to  my  question  about  the  girl  of  the  evening 
before,  he  explained  to  me  that  they  had  all  of  them  been 
sent  to  the  committee  (I  think  I  am  right).  In  reply  to 
my  question  as  to  where  they  had  passed  the  night,  he 
answered  indefinitely.  He  did  not  remember  the  one  I 
was  talking  about,  —  there  were  so  many  of  them  each 
day. 

In  Ezhanov  House  I  found,  in  Number  32,  the  sexton 
reading  the  prayers  over  the  deceased  woman.  She  had 
been  placed  on  what  had  been  her  cot,  and  the  lodgers, 
all  of  them  people  without  means,  had  collected  among 
themselves  money  for  the  mass,  the  coffin,  and  the  shroud, 
and  the  old  women  had  dressed  and  prepared  her.  The 
sexton  was  reading  in  the  darkness ;  a  woman  in  a  cloak 
was  standing  with  a  wax  tapci',  and  another  taper  was 
held  by  a  man  (one  would  think  a  gentleman)  in  a  clean 
overcoat  with  an  astrakhan  collar,  shining  galoshes,  and  a 
starched  shirt.  This  was  her  brother.  They  had  found 
him. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  181 

I  went  past  the  deceased  woman  to  the  landlady's 
corner,  and  asked  her  all  about  it. 

She  was  frightened  at  my  questions;  she  was  appar- 
ently afraid  lest  she  should  be  accused  of  something  ; 
later  she  talked  more  freely,  and  told  me  everything. 
As  I  went  back  I  looked  at  the  dead  woman.  All  dead 
persons  are  beautiful,  but  this  one  was  especially  beauti- 
ful and  invited  sympathy  in  her  coffin  :  her  face  was  clean 
and  pale,  with  closed,  bulging  eyes,  sunken  cheeks,  and 
soft  blond  hair  on  her  high  brow  ;  her  face  looked  weary, 
kind,  and  not  sad,  but  surprised.  Indeed,  if  the  living  do 
not  see,  the  dead  are  surprised. 

On  the  day  on  which  I  noted  this  down  a  grand  ball 
was  given  in  Moscow. 

That  night  I  left  home  at  nine  o'clock.  I  live  in  a 
locality  which  is  surrounded  by  factories,  and  I  left  the 
house  after  the  whistles  of  the  factory  had  blown,  wdiich 
after  a  week  of  unceasing  work  dismissed  the  people  for 
a  free  day. 

Factory  hands  rushed  by  me,  and  I  walked  past  factory 
hands  who  were  making  for  the  inns  and  restaurants. 
Many  were  already  drunk,  and  many  were  with  women. 

I  live  among  factories.  Every  morning  at  five  o'clock 
I  hear  a  whistle,  another,  a  third,  a  tenth,  and  so  on  and 
on.  That  means  that  the  work  of  the  women,  children, 
and  old  men  has  begun.  At  eight  o'clock  there  is  a 
second  whistle :  this  is  a  half-hour  intermission.  At 
noon  —  a  third  :  this  is  an  hour  for  dinner  ;  and  at  eight  — 
a  fourth :  the  end  of  work. 

By  a  strange  coincidence  all  three  factories  in  my 
neighlDourhood  produce  nothing  but  articles  for  balls. 

In  the  one  nearest  to  me  they  manufacture  stockings ; 
in  another  —  silk  stuffs;  in  the  third  —  perfumes  and 
pomatum. 

It  is  possible  to  hear  these  whistles,  and  not  connect 
with  them  any  other  idea  than  the   definition   of  time. 


182  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

"  Ah,  there  is  the  whistle,  and  so  it  is  time  to  take  a 
walk ! "  But  it  is  also  possible  to  connect  with  these 
whistles  what  there  is  in  reality,  namely,  that  the  first 
whistle  at  five  in  the  morning  means,  that  people  who 
have  slept  in  a  damp  basement,  frequently  men  and 
women  indiscriminately  together,  are  getting  up  in  the 
dark  and  are  hastening  to  the  plant  where  the  machines 
wMr,  to  take  their  places  at  their  work,  the  end  and  per- 
sonal use  of  which  they  do  not  see,  and  work,  frequently 
in  a  hot  and  stifling  atmosphere,  and  in  the  dirt,  with  a 
very  short  intermission,  an  hour,  two,  three,  twelve,  and 
more  hours  in  succession.  They  fall  asleep  and  again 
wake  up,  and  again  and  again  continue  the  same  senseless 
labour,  which  want  alone  compels  them  to  do. 

Thus  passes  one  week  after  another,  with  the  interrup- 
tion of  holidays,  and  even  now  I  see  the  labourers  who 
are  dismissed  for  one  of  these  holidays.  They  come  out 
into  the  street:  everywhere  are  restaurants,  the  Tsar's 
inns  girls.  And  they  are  drunk  and  drag  one  another  by 
the  hand,  and  take  along  girls,  such  as  the  one  who  the 
day  before  was  taken  to  the  station,  and  hire  cabs,  and 
ride  in  them,  and  go  from  restaurant  to  restaurant, 
and  curse,  and  loaf,  and  talk,  themselves  not  knowing 
what.  I  had  seen  such  loafing  of  the  labourers  before, 
and  had  shunned  them  with  a  feeling  of  loathing,  and 
had  almost  rebuked  them ;  but  ever  since  I  have  been 
hearing  these  whistles  every  day  and  known  their  mean- 
ing, I  have  been  wondering  how  it  is  that  all  the  men  do 
not  join  those  gangs  of  which  Moscow  is  full,  and  that  all 
the  women  do  not  fall  to  the  condition  of  the  girl  whom 
I  met  near  my  house.  , 

I  walked  about,  watching  these  labourers,  who  loafed 
in  the  streets  until  eleven  o'clock.  After  that  the  anima- 
tion began  to  die  down  Here  and  there  a  few  drunken 
persons  were  left,  and  here  and  there  men  and  women 
were  being  taken  to  the  station.     Then  carriages  began  to 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  18 


o 


make  their  appearance,  all  of  them  moving  in  the  same 
direction. 

On  the  box  of  each  carriage  there  is  a  coachman,  fre- 
quently in  a  sheepskin  coat,  and  a  lackey,  a  dandy  with  a 
cockade.  The  well-fed  trotters  in  housings  fly  through 
the  frost  at  a  rate  of  twenty  versts  an  hour ;  in  the  car- 
riages are  ladies,  who  are  wrapped  in  capes  and  who  are 
guarding  their  flowers  and  their  coiffures.  Everything, 
from  the  harness  on  the  horses,  the  carriages,  the  rubber 
tires,  the  cloth  of  the  coachman's  coat,  to  the  stockings, 
shoes,  flowers,  velvet,  gloves,  and  perfume,  —  all  that  is 
made  by  those  people  who  are  lying  drunk  on  their  cots 
in  sleeping  apartments,  or  are  passing  their  nights  with 
prostitutes  in  doss-houses,  or  are  locked  up  in  jails.  And 
the  visitors  to  the  ball  ride  past  them  in  everything  of 
theirs,  and  it  does  not  occur  to  them  that  there  is  any 
connection  between  the  ball  to  which  they  are  hastening 
and  these  drunkards  at  whom  the  coachmen  shout. 

These  people  enjoy  themselves  at  the  ball,  in  the  calm- 
est manner  possible  and  with  the  fullest  conviction  that 
what  they  are  doing  is  not  bad,  but  very  good.  They 
enjoy  themselves !  They  enjoy  themselves  from  eleven 
until  six  in  the  morning,  through  the  deepest  night,  while 
these  people  are  tossing  with  empty  stomachs  in  lodging- 
houses,  and  some  of  them  die,  hke  the  laundress. 

Their  enjoyment  consists  in  this,  that  women  and 
girls,  baring  their  breasts  and  attaching  bustles  behind, 
get  themselves  up  in  an  indecent  manner  in  which  no 
uncorrupted  woman  or  girl  would  want  to  appear  before 
a  man ;  and  in  this  half-naked  condition,  with  protrud- 
ing bare  breasts,  arms  bare  to  the  shoulder,  artificial 
bustles,  and  prominent  hips,  in  the  most  glaring  light, 
the  women  and  the  girls,  whose  first  virtue  has  always 
been  modesty,  appear  amidst  strange  men,  who  themselves 
wear  indecently  close-fitting  garments,  and  they  embrace 
them  and  circle  around  with  them  to  the  sounds  of  intox- 


184  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

icating  music.  Old  women,  who  frequently  are  as  much 
bared  as  the  younger  women,  sit  and  watch,  and  eat  and 
drink  what  tastes  good ;  old  men  do  the  same.  No 
wonder  all  this  takes  place  in  the  night,  when  all  those 
people  are  asleep,  and  no  one  can  see  them.  But  this  is 
not  done  in  order  to  conceal  anything :  it  seems  to  them 
that  there  is  nothing  to  conceal,  that  it  is  very  good, 
and  that  with  this  enjoyment,  in  which  the  painful  labour 
of  thousands  of  people  is  used  up,  they  not  only  do  not 
offend  any  one,  but  even  support  the  poor  people. 

It  may  be  very  merry  at  balls ;  but  how  did  this  come 
about  ?  When  we  see  in  society  and  about  us  even  one 
man  who  has  not  eaten  or  is  suffering  cold,  we  feel 
ashamed  to  make  merry,  until  that  man  gets  something 
to  eat  and  is  warmed  up,  to  say  nothing  of  this,  that  it  is 
impossible  to  imagine  people  making  merry  at  an  entertain- 
ment which  causes  suffering  to  others.  We  loathe  and 
cannot  understand  the  merriment  of  bad  boys  who  pinch 
a  dog's  tail  with  a  forked  stick  and  find  fun  in  doing  it. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  here,  in  these  our  entertainments, 
we  are  so  blind  as  not  to  see  the  forked  stick  with  which 
we  are  pinching  the  tails  of  all  those  people  who  suffer 
for  the  sake  of  our  entertainment  ? 

Not  a  woman  who  goes  to  this  ball  in  a  dress  costing 
150  roubles  was  born  at  a  ball  or  at  Madame  Minan- 
guoit's,  but  each  one  has  lived  in  the  country,  has  seen 
peasants,  and  knows  her  nurse  and  chambermaid,  who 
have  poor  fathers  and  brothers,  for  whom  the  earning  of 
150  roubles  with  which  to  build  a  hut  is  the  aim  of  a 
long  life  of  hard  labour ;  she  knows  this ;  how,  then,  can 
she  make  merry,  knowing  that  at  this  ball  she  is  wear- 
ing on  her  bared  body  that  hut  which  is  the  dream  of 
the  brother  of  her  good  chambermaid  ? 

But,  let  us  suppose  that  she  may  not  have  made  this 
reflection ;  one  would  think  she  could  not  help  knowing 
that  the  velvet  and  the  silk,  the  confectionery  and  the 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       185 

flowers,  and  the  laces,  and  the  dresses  do  not  grow  of 
their  own  accord,  but  are  made  by  men ;  she  cannot  help 
knowing  what  kind  of  people  make  all  these  things,  under 
what  conditions,  and  why.  She  cannot  help  knowing 
that  the  seamstress,  whom  she  scolded,  did  not  make  that 
dress  for  her  out  of  love  for  her ;  and  so  she  cannot  help 
knowing  that  all  this  was  done  for  her  from  want,  that,  like 
her  dress,  the  laces,  and  the  flowers,  and  the  velvet  were 
done  in  the  same  way.  But,  maybe,  they  are  so  befogged 
that  they  do  not  see  this ;  but  the  woman  certainly  cannot 
fail  to  have  observed  that  live  or  six  respectable,  often 
sickly,  old  lackeys  and  maids  lost  sleep  while  busy  with 
her.  She  saw  their  gloomy  faces.  She  cannot  help 
knowing  that  this  night  the  frost  reached  28  degrees 
Eeaumur,  and  that  the  old  coachman  passed  the  whole 
night  on  the  box.  But  I  know  that  they,  indeed,  do  not 
see  any  of  these  things.  And  if  they,  these  young  women 
and  girls,  who  on  account  of  the  hypnotism  produced  on 
them  by  this  ball  do  not  see  all  this,  they  cannot  be  con- 
demned. These  poor  women  do  everything  which  is 
regarded  as  good  by  their  elders  ;  but  how  will  the  elders 
explain  their  cruelty  to  the  people  ? 

The  elders  will  always  give  tliis  one  explanation  :  "  I  do 
not  force  a  soul ;  I  buy  the  things,  and  I  hire  the  serv- 
ants, the  maids,  and  the  coachmen.  There  is  nothing 
bad  in  buying  and  hiring.  I  do  not  force  a  soul,  —  I  hire 
them,  —  so  where  is  the  wrong  ? " 

The  other  day  I  called  on  an  acquaintance  of  mine. 
As  I  passed  through  the  first  room,  I  was  surprised  to  find 
two  women  there  at  the  table,  for  I  knew  that  my  acquaint- 
ance was  a  bachelor.  A  lean,  sallow,  old-looking  woman, 
of  about  thirty  years  of  age,  with  a  kerchief  thrown  over 
her  shoulders,  was  doing  something  very  rapidly  on  the 
table,  jerking  her  body  nervously,  as  though  in  a  fit. 
Diagonally  across  from  her  sat  a  little  girl,  who  was 
doing  something  in  the  same  way,  jerking  aU  the  time. 


186  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

Both  women  seemed  to  be  subject  to  the  St.  Vitus's  dance. 
I  went  up  to  them,  and  took  a  glance  at  what  they  were 
doing.  They  cast  their  eyes  up  at  me,  but  continued 
their  work  in  the  same  concentrated  manner.  Before 
them  lay  a  loose  heap  of  tobacco  and  paper  shells :  they 
were  making  cigarettes.  The  woman  rubbed  the  tobacco 
in  the  palms  of  her  hands,  tilled  the  mould  with  it,  stuck 
a  shell  over  it,  pushed  the  tobacco  in,  and  threw  the 
cigarette  to  the  girl.  The  girl  rolled  up  a  piece  of  paper, 
and  stuck  the  wad  into  the  cigarette,  which  she  threw 
down,  to  pick  up  another.  All  this  was  done  with  such 
rapidity  and  with  such  tension  that  it  is  impossible  to 
describe  it  to  a  man  who  has  not  seen  it.  I  expressed 
my  surprise  at  their  rapidity. 

"  Have  been  doing  nothing  else  for  fourteen  years," 
said  the  woman. 

«  Well,  is  it  hard  ?  " 

"  Yes.  It  hurts  in  the  chest,  and  the  odour  is  hard 
to  bear." 

Indeed,  she  did  not  have  to  tell  me  so.  It  was  enough 
to  look  at  her  and  at  the  girl.  The  girl  has  been  working 
at  it  for  more  than  two  years ;  but  any  one  who  sees  her 
at  her  work  will  say  that  it  is  a  strong  organism  which 
is  beginning  to  decompose.  My  acquaintance,  a  good  and 
liberal  man,  hired  them  for  two  roubles  and  fifty  kopeks 
per  thousand.  He  has  money,  and  he  pays  them  for  their 
work,  so  where  is  the  harm  ?  My  acquaintance  gets  up  at 
noon.  The  evenings,  from  six  until  two,  he  passes  playing 
cards,  or  at  the  piano,  and  he  eats  and  drinks  savoury 
food ;  all  his  work  is  done  by  others.  He  is  trying  a 
new  pleasure,  smoking.  He  began  to  smoke  within  my 
memory. 

There  are  a  woman  and  a  girl  who  can  barely  support 
themselves  by  changing  themselves  into  machines  and  all 
their  lives  inhaling  tobacco,  and  who  thus  ruin  their  lives. 
He  has  money,  which  he  has  not  earned,  and  he  prefers 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  187 

to  play  vint  to  making  cigarettes  for  himself.  He  gives 
these  women  money  on  condition  that  they  continue  to 
live  just  as  wretchedly  as  before,  that  is,  tliat  they  make 
cigarettes  for  him. 

I  love  cleanliness  and  give  money  on  this  condition 
alone,  that  the  laundress  shall  wash  the  shirt  which  I 
change  twice  a  day,  and  this  shirt  has  worn  out  the 
laundress,  and  she  has  died. 

Where  is  the  wrong  here  ?  People  who  buy  and  hire 
will  continue  without  me  to  compel  others  to  make  velvet 
and  confections,  and  will  buy  them,  and  without  me  men 
will  hire  people  to  make  cigarettes  and  wash  shirts.  Why, 
then,  should  I  deprive  myself  of  velvet,  and  confections, 
and  cigarettes,  and  clean  shirts,  if  such  is  the  order  of 
things  ?  I  frequently,  almost  always,  hear  this  reflection. 
It  is  the  same  kind  of  a  reflection  that  a  maddened  crowd 
makes  when  it  destroys  something.  It  is  the  same  kind 
of  a  reflection  that  dogs  are  guided  by,  when  one  of  them 
knocks  down  another,  and  all  the  others  rush  upon  the 
under  dog  and  tear  it  to  pieces.  "  If  the  others  have  begun 
to  ruin  the  thing,  why  can't  I  do  it  also  ?  Well,  what 
will  happen  if  I  wear  a  dirty  shirt  and  make  my  own 
cigarettes  ?  Will  anybody  be  better  off  from  it  ? "  ask 
people  who  want  to  justify  themselves.  If  we  were  not 
so  far  from  the  truth,  it  would  be  a  shame  to  answer  such 
a  question ;  but  we  are  so  mixed  up  that  this  question 
seems  very  natural  to  us,  and  so,  though  we  feel  ashamed, 
we  must  answer  it. 

What  difference  will  there  be  if  I  wear  a  shirt  a  week, 
and  not  a  day,  and  make  my  own  cigarettes,  or  stop 
smoking  altogether  ? 

It  will  be  this,  that  some  laundress  and  some  maker  of 
cigarettes  will  strain  themselves  less,  and  this,  that  what 
before  I  spent  for  laundry  and  the  making  of  cigarettes,  I 
can  give  to  the  laundress,  or  to  other  laundresses  and 
labourers,  who  are  tired  by  their  work,  and  who,  instead 


188  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

of  working  above  their  strength,  will  be  able  to  rest  and 
to  have  some  tea.  But  I  have  heard  objections  to  this. 
(Eich  and  elegant  people  are  so  ashamed  to  understand 
their  position.)  To  this  they  say  :  "  If  I  wear  dirty  linen 
and  stop  smoking,  and  give  this  money  to  the  poor,  the 
poor  will  none  the  less  be  despoiled  of  everything,  and 
your  drop  in  the  ocean  will  do  no  good." 

One  feels  even  more  ashamed  to  answer  this  objection, 
but  the  answer  has  to  be  given.  It  is  such  a  common 
objection.     The  answer  to  it  is  simple. 

If  I  come  to  savages,  and  they  treat  me  to  cutlets,  which 
seem  savoury  to  me,  and  I  on  the  following  day  learn 
(perhaps  I  see  it  myself)  that  the  savoury  cutlets  are  made 
of  the  flesh  of  a  captive  man,  who  was  killed  for  the 
purpose  of  furnishing  savoury  cutlets,  and  I  find  it  wrong 
to  eat  men,  —  then,  no  matter  how  good  the  cutlets  may 
taste,  no  matter  how  common  the  custom  of  devouring 
men  may  be  among  my  fellows,  no  matter  how  little  the 
captives  who  are  prepared  as  food  may  profit  from  my 
refusal  to  eat  the  cutlets,  I  shall  not  and  cannot  eat  them 
again.  Maybe  I  shall  devour  human  flesh  when  driven  to 
it  by  hunger,  but  I  shall  not  feast  any  one  and  shall  not 
take  part  in  a  feast  at  which  human  flesh  is  eaten,  and 
shall  not  look  for  such  feasts,  or  be  proud  of  taking  part 
in  them. 


XXV. 

But  what  shall  we  do  ?  We  certainly  did  not  do  this  ? 
If  not  we,  who  did  ?  We  say  that  we  did  not  do  it ;  it  just 
did  itself,  as  children  say,  when  they  break  something, 
that  it  just  broke  itself.  We  say  that  so  long  as  cities 
exist  and  we  live  in  them,  we  support  people  by  buying 
their  labour  for  the  purpose  of  serving  them. 

But  that  is  not  true,  and  that  is  the  reason  why  we 
need  only  look  at  ourselves,  to  see  how  we  live  in  the 
country,  and  how  we  there  support  people. 

The  winter  is  past  in  the  city,  and  Easter  week  comes. 
In  the  city  the  same  orgy  of  the  rich  is  continued :  in  the 
boulevards,  the  gardens,  and  the  parks,  and  on  the  river 
there  are  music,  theatres,  rides,  promenades,  all  kinds  of 
illuminations,  and  fireworks ;  but  in  the  country  it  is 
better :  the  an-  is  better,  and  the  trees,  the  fields,  the 
flowers,  are  fresher.  We  must  go  where  all  this  is  budding 
and  flowering.  And  the  majority  of  the  rich  people,  who 
exploit  the  labours  of  others,  go  into  the  country,  to 
breathe  this  better  air  and  to  look  at  these  better  fields 
and  woods. 

And  so  the  rich  people  settle  in  the  country,  amidst 
dirty-looking  peasants,  who  live  on  bread  and  onions, 
work  eighteen  hours  a  day,  go  nights  without  getting 
enough  sleep,  and  wear  coarse  clothes.  Here  no  one  has 
tempted  the  people :  there  have  been  no  factories  here, 
and  there  are  none  of  those  unemployed  hands,  of  whom 
there  are  so  many  in  the  city,  and  whom  we  are  supposed 
to  be  feeding  by  giving  them  work.  Here  the  people  never 
get  enough  time  in  the  summer  to  do  all  their  work,  and 

189 


190  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

not  only  are  there  here  no  unemployed  hands,  but  much 
property  goes  to  ruin  from  lack  of  working  hands,  and  a 
mass  of  men,  children,  old  men,  and  women  with  children 
perish  from  overstraining  themselves.  How  do  the  rich 
arrange  their  lives  here  ? 

Like  this.  If  there  was  an  old  house,  which  was  built 
in  the  days  of  serfdom,  it  is  renovated  and  beautified ;  if 
there  is  none,  a  new  one,  two  or  three  stories  high,  is 
built.  The  rooms,  of  which  there  are  from  twelve  to 
twenty,  and  more,  are  all  about  six  arshius  in  height. 
The  floors  are  of  parquetry,  the  windows  have  large  panes  ; 
there  are  costly  carpets,  costly  furniture,  and  a  buffet 
costing  from  two  hundred  to  six  hundred  roubles. 

The  walks  near  the  house  are  made  with  gravel,  the 
ground  is  levelled  off  and  provided  with  garden  beds,  and 
croquet  grounds  are  laid  out ;  they  put  up  reflecting 
globes,  frequently  greenhouses,  hotbeds,  and  high  stables, 
always  with  ornaments  on  the  ridge-piece.  Everything  is 
painted  with  oil-colours,  the  oil  being  what  the  old  men 
and  the  children  do  not  get  in  their  porridge. 

If  the  rich  man  is  able,  he  settles  in  such  a  house ;  if 
not,  he  hires  one ;  but  no  matter  how  poor  or  how  liberal 
a  man  from  our  circle  may  be,  when  he  settles  in  the 
country,  he  settles  in  a  house,  for  the  building  and  clean- 
liness of  which  it  is  necessary  to  take  dozens  of  people 
away  from  their  work,  though  they  have  not  time  enough 
to  attend  to  the  corn  for  their  own  sustenance. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  here  that  there  are  factories  and 
that  it  will  be  all  the  same,  whether  I  make  use  of  them 
or  not.  Here  we  directly  introduce  factories  of  things 
which  we  need,  and  directly,  by  exploiting  the  want  of 
the  people  who  surround  us,  tear  them  away  from  the 
work  which  is  necessary  for  them  and  for  us  and  for  all 
men,  and  thus  we  corrupt  one  set  of  men  and  ruin  the 
lives  and  the  health  of  other  men. 

Let  us  say,  a  cultured  and  honourable  family  from 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  191 

the  gentry  or  from  the  official  classes  is  living  in  the 
country. 

All  the  members  of  the  family  and  the  guests  come 
down  there  in  the  middle  of  June,  because  until  then  they 
have  been  studying  and  passing  examinations,  that  is, 
they  arrive  in  the  beginning  of  mowing-time.  The  mem- 
bers of  this  family  (like  nearly  all  people  of  this  circle) 
stay  in  the  country  from  the  beginning  of  the  busy  sea- 
sou,  the  haying-time,  not  to  its  end,  for  in  September  the 
sowiug  and  the  potato-digging  is  still  going  on,  but  to 
the  time  of  slackening  the  intensity  of  the  labour. 

During  the  whole  time  of  their  stay  in  the  country 
there  is  going  on  around  them,  by  their  side,  that  summer 
work  of  the  peasants,  of  the  tension  of  which  we  cannot 
form  any  idea,  no  matter  how  much  we  may  have  heard 
of  it,  or  how  much  we  may  have  read  about  it,  or  looked 
at  it,  unless  we  experience  it  ourselves. 

The  members  of  the  family,  about  ten  of  them,  live  as 
badly  as  in  the  city,  even  worse,  if  such  thing  is  possible, 
than  in  the  city,  because  here  in  the  country  it  is 
assumed  that  the  members  of  the  family  are  resting  (from 
doing  nothing)  and  so  have  no  simihtude  of  work,  no 
excuse  for  their  idleness. 

About  St.  Peter's  Day,  —  during  hungry  Lent,  when  the 
peasants'  food  consist?  of  kvas,  bread,  and  onions, — 
the  mowing  begins.  The  gentlemen  who  live  in  the 
country  see  this  work,  partly  order  the  men  about,  partly 
enjoy  looking  at  it,  smelling  the  odour  of  the  wilting  hay, 
hearing  the  songs  of  the  women  and  the  clanking  of  the 
scythes,  and  seeing  the  rows  of  mowers  and  raking  women. 

They  see  this  near  the  house,  and  when  the  younger 
people  and  the  children,  who  have  been  doing  nothing 
the  whole  day,  are  sure  to  be  driven  on  well-fed  horses,  a 
distance  of  half  a  verst,  in  order  to  bathe  in  the  river. 

The  work  which  is  being  done  at  the  mowing  is  one  of 
the  most  important  in  the  world.     Nearly  every  year  the 


192  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

lack  of  hands  and  of  time  causes  the  mowings  to  remain 
partly  unmown,  and  for  the  same  reason  the  meadows  are 
liable  to  be  spoiled  by  the  rain ;  the  more  or  less  tense 
work  decides  the  question  whether  twenty  or  more  per 
cent,  of  hay  will  be  added  to  the  wealth  of  the  people,  or 
whether  this  amount  will  rot,  or  harden  on  the  root.  If 
there  is  more  hay,  the  old  men  will  get  meat  to  eat,  and 
the  children  milk  to  drink.  Thus  it  is  in  general,  and  in 
particular  the  question  is  here  being  solved  for  every 
mower  as  to  the  bread  and  milk  for  himself  and  the 
children  in  the  winter.  Every  labouring  man  and  woman 
knows  this,  and  even  the  children  know  that  this  is  an 
important  work  and  that  it  is  necessary  for  them  to  work 
with  all  their  might  and  main,  —  to  carry  the  pitcher 
with  kvas  to  their  fathers  in  the  field,  and,  changing  the 
heavy  pitcher  from  hand  to  hand,  to  run  with  bare  feet 
and  as  fast  as  possible  the  two  versts  from  the  village,  in 
order  to  get  there  in  time,  and  keep  their  fathers  from 
scolding.  Everybody  knows  that  from  mowing-time 
until  the  harvest  there  will  be  no  interruption  in  the 
work  and  no  time  for  resting. 

And  it  is  not  the  mowing  alone,  for  everybody  has,  in 
addition  to  the  mowing,  other  work  to  do;  the  ground 
has  to  be  turned  up  and  harrowed ;  the  women  have  to 
attend  to  the  making  of  the  linen,  and  the  bread,  and  the 
washing  ;  and  the  men  have  to  go  to  mill,  and  to  the  city, 
and  to  attend  to  the  business  of  the  Commune,  and  go  to 
the  judge  and  to  the  captain,  and  look  after  the  wagons, 
and  feed  the  horses  at  night,  —  and  all,  the  old,  and  the 
young,  and  the  sick,  work  with  all  their  might.  The 
peasants  work  so  hard  that,  before  the  end  of  the  day's 
work,  the  weak,  the  striplings,  and  the  old  walk  the  last 
rows  with  great  difficulty,  tottering  as  they  walk,  and 
with  difficulty  get  up  after  a  rest ;  similarly  work  the 
women,  who  are  often  pregnant  or  nursing  babies. 

The  work  is  tense  and  incessant.     All  work  with  all 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  193 

their  might,  and  during  this  work  not  only  eat  up  all 
the  supplies  of  their  scanty  food,  but  also  all  their  for- 
mer supplies :  all  of  them,  never  any  too  stout,  grow 
lean  after  their  summer's   work. 

Here  is  a  small  company  working  a-mowing :  three 
peasants,  —  one  old  man,  another,  his  nephew,  a  young 
married  lad,  and  a  shoemaker  of  the  manor,  a  muscular 
man.  This  mowing;  decides  the  fate  of  the  winter  for 
them  all,  whether  they  can  keep  a  cow,  and  pay  their 
taxes.  They  have  been  working  without  cessation  and 
without  rest  for  two  weeks.  The  rain  has  retarded  their 
work.  After  the  rain,  when  the  grass  dried  in  the  wind, 
they  decided  to  finish  the  work  and,  to  do  the  work  more 
quickly,  they  determined  to  have  two  women  to  each 
scythe.  With  the  old  man  comes  out  his  wife,  fifty  years 
of  age,  worn  out  from  work  and  eleven  childbirths,  and 
deaf,  but  still  a  good  worker,  and  his  thirteen-year-old 
daughter,  a  rather  small,  but  strong  and  quick  girl.  With 
the  nephew  comes  out  his  wife,  a  powerful  and  tall 
woman,  as  strong  as  any  peasant,  and  his  sister-in-law, 
the  pregnant  wife  of  a  soldier.  With  the  shoemaker 
comes  his  wife,  a  good  worker,  and  her  mother,  an  old 
woman,  finishing  her  eighth  decade,  who  otherwise  is  out 
begging  alms.  They  start  out  in  a  row  and  work  from 
morning  until  night,  in  the  sweltering  heat  of  the  June  sun. 
They  hate  to  stop  their  work  to  fetch  some  water  or  kvas. 

A  tiny  boy,  the  old  woman's  grandchild,  fetches  the 
water.  The  old  woman,  who  seems  to  be  worrying  lest 
she  be  driven  away  from  the  work,  holds  on  to  the  rake 
and  moves  on  with  difficulty,  but  still  keeps  up  with  the 
rest.  The  boy  is  all  bent  up,  and  takes  short  steps  with 
his  bare  feet,  dragging  along  the  pitcher  of  water,  which 
is  heavier  than  he  himself,  and  changing  it  from  hand  to 
hand.  The  girl  shoulders  a  load  of  hay,  which  is  also 
heavier  than  she ;  she  takes  a  few  steps,  and  stops,  and 
throws  down  the  load,  unable  to  carry  it  any  longer.    The 


194  WHAT   SHALL    WE   DO   THEN? 

fifty-year-old  woman  is  raking  without  cessation  and,  with 
her  kerchief  knocked  to  one  side,  is  dragging  along  the  hay, 
breathing  heavily  and  tottering  in  her  walk ;  the  eighty- 
year-old  woman  does  nothing  but  rake,  but  even  that  is 
above  her  strength ;  she  slowly  shuffles  her  bast  shoe 
covered  feet  and,  scowling,  looks  gloomily  in  front  of  her, 
like  a  dangerously  sick  or  dying  man.  The  old  man  pur- 
posely sends  her  away  from  the  rest  to  rake  near  the 
cocks,  so  that  she  may  not  keep  in  a  row  with  the  rest, 
but  she  does  not  give  up,  and  with  the  same  dead,  gloomy 
face  works  while  the  others  work. 

The  sun  is  setting  behind  the  forest,  and  the  cocks  are 
not  yet  all  cleared  away :  there  is  still  nuich  work  ahead. 

All  feel  that  it  is  time  to  take  a  rest,  but  nobody  speaks, 
waiting  for  the  others  to  say  it  is.  Finally  the  shoemaker, 
feeling  that  he  has  no  more  strength,  proposes  to  the 
old  man  to  leave  the  cocks  until  the  next  day,  and  the  old 
man  consents  to  it,  and  immediately  the  women  run  after 
their  clothes,  after  the  pitchers,  and  after  the  forks,  and 
the  old  woman  sits  down  at  once,  and  then  lies  down,  still 
looking  ahead  of  her  with  the  same  dead  glance.  But 
the  women  walk  away,  and  she  gets  up,  groaning,  and 
drags  herself  away  after  them. 

And  here  is  the  gentleman's  house.  That  same  even- 
ing, while  from  the  village  are  heard  the  sounds  of  the 
whetstones  of  the  weary  mowers,  returning  from  the  mow- 
ing, the  sounds  of  the  hammer  against  the  scythe-blade, 
the  shouts  of  the  women  and  girls  who,  having  barely  put 
down  their  rakes,  are  already  running  to  drive  the  cattle 
home,  —  in  the  house  of  the  gentleman  other  sounds  are 
heard :  the  banging  of  the  piano  is  heard,  there  resounds 
a  Hungarian  song,  and  now  and  then,  through  the  song, 
one  catches  the  sound  of  the  mallets  striking  the  croquet 
balls.  At  the  stable  stands  a  carriage  drawn  by  four  well- 
fed  horses.     It  is  the  carriage  of  the  foppish  driver. 

Guests  have  arrived:  they  paid  ten  roubles  for  being 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  195 

driven  fifteen  versts.  The  horses,  standing  at  the  car- 
riage, tinkle  with  their  Httle  bells.  There  is  hay  in  their 
trough,  and  they  trample  it  under  foot,  that  hay  which 
the  peasants  gather  with  such  difficulty  there  in  the  field. 
There  is  a  commotion  in  the  yard  of  the  manor  :  a  healthy- 
looking,  well-fed  lad  in  a  pink  shirt,  given  him  by  the 
janitor  for  his  service,  is  calhng  to  the  coachmen  to  hitch 
and  saddle  the  horses.  Two  peasants,  who  live  here  as 
coachmen,  come  out  of  the  coachmen's  room  and  walk 
leisurely,  swaying  their  arms,  to  saddle  the  horses  for  the 
gentlemen. 

Still  nearer  to  the  house  the  sounds  of  another  piano 
are  heard.  A  conservatory  graduate,  who  is  living  with 
the  gentlefolk,  to  teach  the  children  music,  is  practising 
Schumann.  The  sounds  of  one  piano  break  in  on  those 
of  the  other.  Near  the  house  two  nurses  are  walkins; : 
one  of  them  is  young,  the  other  old.  They  are  leading 
and  carrying  children,  of  the  same  age  as  those  who  were 
carrying  the  pitchers  from  the  village,  to  put  them  to  bed. 
One  of  the  nurses  is  an  Englishwoman,  who  cannot  talk 
Kussian.  She  was  imported  from  England,  not  because 
she  is  supposed  to  have  any  special  qualifications,  but 
because  she  cannot  talk  Eussian.  Farther  down  a  peasant 
and  two  women  are  watering  the  flowers  near  the 
house,  while  another  is  cleaning  a  gun  for  the  young 
master. 

Here  two  women  are  carrying  a  basket  with  clean  un- 
derwear ;  they  have  washed  the  linen  of  the  family  and 
of  the  English  and  the  French  assistants.  In  the  house 
two  women  with  difficulty  manage  to  wash  all  the  dishes 
for  the  gentlefolk,  who  have  just  had  their  meal,  and  two 
peasants  in  dress  coats  are  running  up  and  down  on  the 
staircase,  passing  coffee,  tea,  wine,  Seltzer.  On  the  porch 
a  table  is  set :  they  have  just  finished  eating,  and  soon 
they  will  eat  again  until  cockcrow,  until  midnight,  until 
three  o'clock,  often  until  daybreak. 


196  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

Some  sit  and  smoke,  playing  cards ;  others  sit  and 
smoke,  carrying  on  liberal  conversations ;  others  walk 
from  place  to  place,  eating  and  smoking,  and,  not  knowing 
what  to  do,  decide  to  go  out  riding.  There  are  fifteen 
able-bodied  men  and  women  there,  and  they  are  served 
by  about  thirty  able-bodied  men  and  women  servants. 

And  this  is  taking  place  where  every  hour,  every  lad,  is 
valuable.  And  this  will  take  place  in  July,  when  the 
peasants,  without  getting  enough  sleep,  will  mow  the  oats 
at  night,  to  keep  them  from  shelliug  out,  and  the  women 
will  get  up  at  night  in  order  to  thresh  the  straw  for  sheaf 
ropes,  when  the  old  women,  and  the  pregnant  women,  and 
the  young  children  will  overwork  and  get  sick  from  too 
much  drinking,  and  when  there  will  not  be  enough  hands, 
nor  horses,  nor  wagons,  to  take  to  the  barn  the  corn  which 
feeds  all  men,  of  which  millions  of  puds  are  needed  a  day 
in  Eussia,  in  order  that  people  may  not  die ;  and  at  this 
time  this  life  of  the  gentlefolk  will  be  continued,  —  there 
will  be  theatres,  picuics,  hunts,  drinking,  eating,  pianos, 
singing,  dancing,  -  —  an  unceasing  orgy. 

Here  it  is  impossible  to  give  the  excuse  that  such  is 
the  order  of  things  :  nothing  of  the  kind  is  the  case.  We 
ourselves  introduce  this  life,  taking  the  bread  and  the 
labour  away  from  the  men  who  are  worn  out  by  labour. 
We  live  as  though  there  w^ere  no  connection  between 
the  dying  laundress,  the  fourteen-year-old  prostitute,  the 
women  who  are  fagged  out  by  the  making  of  cigarettes, 
and  the  old  women  and  children  about  us  who  work 
intensely,  above  their  strength,  without  sufficient  food ; 
we  live,  —  enjoying  ourselves  in  luxury,  as  though  there 
were  no  connection  between  that  and  our  life ;  we  do  not 
want  to  see  this,  that,  if  it  were  not  for  our  idle,  luxurious, 
and  debauched  life,  there  would  be  none  of  this  work  above 
their  strength,  and  if  there  were  none  of  that  work,  there 
would  not  be  our  fife. 

It  seems  to  us  that  sufferings  are  one  thing,  and  our 


s 


WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO   THEN?  197 

life  another  thing,  and  that  we,  living  as  we  do,  are  as 
innocent  and  pure  as  doves. 

We  read  the  descriptions  of  the  lives  of  the  Eomans 
and  marvel  at  the  inhumanity  of  the  soulless  LucuUi, 
who  stuffed  themselves  with  food  and  drink,  while  the 
people  died  of  hunger ;  we  shake  our  heads  and  marvel  at 
the  savagery  of  our  ancestors,  the  serf-owners,  who  intro- 
duced domestic  theatres  and  orchestras,  and  who  appointed 
whole  villages  to  maintain  their  gardens,  and  from  the 
height  of  our  greatness  we  marvel  at  their  inhumanity. 
We  read  the  words  of  Isaiah,  Chapters V. : 
8.  Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house,  that  lay 
field  to  field,  till  there  be  no  place,  that  they  may  be 
placed  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth  ! 

11.  Woe  unto  them  that  rise  up  early  in  the  morning, 
that  they  may  follow  strong  drink ;  that  continue  until 
night,  till  wine  inflame  them  ! 

12.  And  the  harp  and  the  viol,  the  tabret  and  pipe,  and 
wine,  are  in  their  feasts :  but  they  regard  not  the  work  of 
the  Lord,  neither  consider  the  operation  of  his  hands. 

18.  Woe  unto  them  that  draw  iniquity  with  cords  of 
vanity,  and  sin  as  it  were  with  a  cart  rope : 

20.  Woe  unto  them  that  call  evil  good,  and  good  evil; 
that  put  darkness  for  light,  and  light  for  darkness ;  that 
put  bitter  for  sweet,  and  sweet  for  bitter ! 

21.  Woe  unto  them  that  are  wise  in  their  own  eyes, 
and  prudent  in  their  own  sight ! 

22.  Woe  unto  them  that  are  mighty  to  drink  wine,  and 
men  of  strength  to  mingle  strong  drink  : 

23.  Which  justify  the  wicked  for  reward,  and  take 
away  the  righteousness  of  the  righteous  from  him ! 

We  read  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  Chapter  III.,  10  : 
And    now  also   the  axe   is  laid  unto  the  root  of  the 

trees :  therefore  every  tree  which  bringeth  not  forth  good 

fruit  is  hewn  down,  and  cast  into  the  fire. 

And  we  are  absolutely  convinced  that  we  are  the  good 


198  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

tree  which  bhugs  forth  fruit,  aud  that  these  words  are  not 
said  to  us,  but  to  somebody  else,  to  some  bad  people. 
We  read  the  words  of  Isaiah,  Chapter  VI. : 

10.  Make  the  heart  of  this  people  fat,  and  make 
their  ears  heavy,  and  shut  their  eyes ;  lest  they  see 
with  their  eyes,  and  hear  with  their  ears,  and  under- 
stand with  their  heart,  and  convert,  and  be  healed. 

11.  Then  said  I,  Lord,  how  long?  And  he  answered. 
Until  the  cities  be  wasted  without  inhabitant,  aud  the 
houses  without  man,  and  the  land  be  utterly  desolate. 

We  read  this,  and  are  absolutely  convinced  that  this 
remarkable  work  was  not  done  to  us,  but  to  some  other 
people.  The  reason  why  we  do  not  see  it,  is  because 
this  remarkable  work  has  been  done  to  us :  we  do  not 
hear,  nor  see,  nor  comprehend  with  our  hearts.  How  did 
this  happen  ? 


XXVL 

How  can  a  man  who  considers  himself,  I  shall  not 
say  a  Christian,  nor  even  a  cultured  or  humane  man,  but 
simply  a  man  who  is  not  completely  deprived  of  reason 
and  of  conscience,  live  in  such  a  way  that,  without  taking 
part  in  the  struggle  for  the  life  of  all  humanity,  he  only 
swallows  the  labours  of  the  men  who  are  struggling  for 
life,  and  by  his  demands  increases  the  labour  of  those  who 
struggle  and  of  those  who  perish  in  this  struggle  ?  Our 
so-called  Christian  and  cultured  world  is  full  of  such 
people.  Not  only  is  our  world  full  of  such  men,  but 
the  ideal  of  the  men  of  our  Christian  cultured  world  is 
the  acquisition  of  the  greatest  possible  possessions,  that 
is,  of  the  possibility  of  wealth  which  gives  comfort  and 
idleness,  that  is,  a  liberation  from  the  struggle  for  life, 
and  the  greatest  possible  exploitation  of  the  labour  of 
one's  brothers,  who  are  perishing  in  this  struggle.  How 
could  people  have  fallen  into  such  a  remarkable  delusion  ? 

How  could  they  have  reached  such  a  point  as  not  to 
see,  to  hear,  and  to  comprehend  with  their  hearts  what 
is  so  clear,  so  obvious,  and  so  indisputable  ? 

We  need  but  stop  for  a  moment  and  think,  in  order  to 
be  frightened  at  that  remarkable  contradiction  between 
our  hfe  and  what  we  profess,  we,  I  do  not  say  the  Chris- 
tians, but  the  humane  and  cultured  people. 

I  do  not  know  whether  that  God,  or  that  law  of  Nature, 
by  which  the  world  and  people  exist,  is  good  or  bad ;  but 
the  position  of  men  in  the  world,  from  the  time  we  know 
it,  is  such  that  naked  men,  without  wool  on  their  bodies, 
without  holes  in  which  to  hide  themselves,  without  food 

199 


200       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ? 

which  they  may  find  iu  the  fields,  like  Robinson  on  his 
island,  are  all  put  to  the  necessity  of  struggling  with 
Nature  constantly  and  without  cessation  iu  order  to  cover 
their  bodies,  make  clothes  for  themselves,  defend  them- 
selves, put  a  roof  over  their  heads,  and  work  for  their 
food,  with  which  two  or  three  times  a  day  to  still  their 
hunger  and  the  hunger  of  their  children  and  old  men  who 
cannot  work. 

Wherever,  at  whatever  time,  and  in  whatever  numbers 
we  may  observe  the  life  of  people,  whether  in  Europe,  in 
China,  in  America,  or  in  Russia,  whether  we  shall  view 
all  humanity,  or  a  small  part  of  it ;  whether  in  ancient 
times,  in  the  nomad  state,  or  in  our  time,  with  steam 
motors,  sewing-machines,  electric  light,  and  perfected 
agriculture,  we  shall  see  one  and  the  same  thing,  —  that 
people,  working  constantly  and  inteusely,  are  not  able  to 
acquire  food,  protection,  and  clothing  for  themselves  and 
for  their  little  ones  and  their  old  men,  and  that  a  con- 
siderable part  of  men  is  now  perishing,  as  it  perished 
before,  from  a  want  of  the  means  of  life  and  from  their 
excessive  labour  to  obtain  them. 

No  matter  where  we  may  live,  —  if  we  draw  about  us 
a  circle  of  one  hundred  thousand,  or  of  one  thousand,  or 
of  ten  versts,  or  of  one  verst,  and  look  at  the  lives  of  those 
whom  this  circle  takes  in,  - —  we  shall  see  in  this  circle : 
children  born  before  their  time,  old  men  and  women,  sick 
lying-in  women,  and  weak  persons,  who  have  not  enough 
food  and  rest  to  be  able  to  live  and  so  die  before  their 
time ;  we  shall  see  people  who  in  the  full  strength  of 
their  growth  are  killed  outright  by  perilous  and  harmful 
work. 

Ever  since  the  world  has  existed,  we  see  men  with 
terrible  tension,  privations,  and  sufferings  struggling  with 
their  common  want,  unable  to  vanquish  it.  We  know 
besides  that  each  of  us,  no  matter  where  he  may  live  and 
how  he    may  live,  every  day,   every  hour  involuntarily 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  201 

absorbs  for  himself  part  of  the  labours  which  are  worked 
out  by  humanity.  Xo  matter  where  and  how  he  may 
live,  the  house  and  the  roof  have  uot  grown  over  him  of 
their  own  accord.  The  wood  did  not  walk  into  his  stove, 
nor  did  the  water  come,  nor  did  the  baked  bread,  the 
dinner,  the  clothes,  the  footgear  fall  down  from  the  sky : 
all  that  was  done  for  him  uot  only  by  the  men  of  the 
past,  but  is  being  also  done  by  the  men  of  the  present, 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  whom  are  wasting  away  and 
dying  in  vain  endeavours  to  earn  for  themselves  and  for 
their  children  the  necessary  roof,  food,  and  clothing,  — 
the  means  for  saving  themselves  and  their  children  from 
sufferings  and  premature  death.  All  men  struggle  with 
want.  They  struggle  with  so  much  tension  that  every 
moment  their  like,  their  fathers,  mothers,  children,  are 
perishing  all  around  them. 

People  are  in  this  world  as  in  a  sea-washed  ship  with 
a  small  supply  of  food  :  all  are  placed  by  God,  or  by 
Nature,  in  such  a  situation  that  they  are  compelled,  while 
economizing  on  their  food,  constantly  to  struggle  against 
want.  Every  stoppage  of  each  of  us  in  this  labour,  every 
absorption  of  the  labours  of  others,  which  is  useless  for 
the  common  good,  is  ruinous  for  ourselves  and  for  our 
kind. 

How,  then,  does  it  happen  that  the  majority  of  the 
cultured  people  of  our  time,  though  doing  no  work,  calmly 
absorb  other  men's  labours,  which  are  necessary  for  life, 
and  regard  such  a  life  as  most  natural  and  rational  ? 

In  order  that  men  may  free  themselves  of  the  labour 
which  is  proper  and  natural  to  all,  may  transfer  it  to 
others,  and  with  all  that  not  consider  themselves  traitors 
and  thieves,  two  suppositions  only  are  possible :  first, 
that  we,  the  men  who  do  not  take  part  in  the  general 
labour,  are  beings  distinct  from  the  labouring  men  and 
have  a  special  purpose  in  society,  like  the  drones  or  queen 
bees,  which  have  a  different  purpose  than  the  working 


202  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

bees ;  and  second,  that  the  work  which  we,  the  men  who 
are  freed  from  the  struggle  for  hfe,  are  doing  for  the 
other  men  is  so  useful  for  all  men  that  it  certainly  redeems 
the  harm  which  we  do  to  other  people  by  making  their 
situation  harder. 

In  former  days  people  who  exploited  the  labours  of 
others  asserted  that,  in  the  first  place,  they  were  a  special 
breed,  and,  in  the  second,  were  specially  designated  by 
God  to  care  for  the  good  of  individual  men,  that  is,  to 
govern  them  and  teach  them,  and  so  they  assured  others 
and  frequently  believed  themselves  that  the  work  which 
they  were  doing  was  more  important  and  more  necessary 
for  the  people  than  the  labours  which  they  exploited. 
And  so  long  as  there  was  no  doubt  as  to  the  immediate 
interference  of  the  Divinity  in  human  affairs  and  in  the 
distinction  of  races,  this  justification  was  sufficient.  But 
with  Christianity  and  the  consequent  consciousness  of 
the  equality  and  unity  of  all  men,  this  justification  could 
not  be  advanced  in  its  older  form.  It  was  impossible  to 
assert  that  men  are  born  of  different  breeds  and  distinctions 
and  with  different  destinies,  and  the  old  justification, 
though  supported  by  some  people,  has  slowly  been  abol- 
ished and  hardly  exists  now. 

The  justification  of  the  distinctness  of  the  human 
breeds  was  destroyed  ;  but  the  fact  itself  of  the  liberation 
of  self  from  labour  and  of  the  exploitation  of  the  labour 
of  others  has  remained  the  same  for  those  who  have  the 
power  to  do  so,  and  for  the  existing  fact  they  have  always 
invented  new  justifications,  with  which,  even  without  the 
acknowledgment  of  the  distinctness  of  the  breeds  of  men, 
the  liberation  of  self  from  work,  as  practised  by  those 
who  could  do  so,  might  appear  just.  They  have  invented 
very  many  such  justifications.  However  strange  it  may 
appear,  the  chief  activity  of  what  at  a  given  time  was 
called  science,  of  what  formed  the  ruling  tendency  of 
science,  has  been  and  even  now  continues  to  consist  in 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN?  203 

the  discovery  of  such  justifications.  This  has  been  the 
aim  of  the  activity  of  the  theological  sciences ;  this  has 
been  the  aim  of  the  juridical  sciences ;  this  has  been  the 
aim  of  the  so-called  philosophy,  and  this  has  become  of 
late  (however  strange  it  may  appear  to  us  contemporaries, 
who  make  use  of  this  justification)  the  aim  of  the  activity 
of  the  contemporary  experimental  science. 

All  the  theological  finesses,  which  try  to  prove  that  a 
given  church  is  the  one  true  successor  of  Christ,  and 
so  has  full  and  infinite  power  over  the  souls  and  even 
the  bodies  of  men,  has  this  aim  for  the  chief  motive  of  its 
activity. 

All  the  juridical  sciences,  the  political,  the  criminal,  the 
civil,  the  international  laws,  have  this  one  purpose ;  the 
majority  of  the  pliilosophical  theories,  especially  Hegel's 
theory,  which  has  been  reigning  for  so  long  a  time,  with 
its  thesis  of  the  rationahty  of  everything  which  exists, 
and  that  the  state  is  a  necessary  form  of  the  perfection  of 
personality,  have  the  same  purpose. 

A  very  poor  English  publicist,  whose  works  have  all 
been  forgotten  and  acknowledged  to  be  the  most  insignifi- 
cant of  the  insignificant,  writes  a  treatise  on  population,  in 
which  he  invents  a  law  about  the  increase  of  the  pop- 
ulation which  is  out  of  proportion  with  the  means  of 
existence.  This  imaginary  law  the  writer  decks  out 
mathematically  with  baseless  formulas  and  lets  out  into 
the  world.  To  judge  from  the  frivolity  and  vapidity  of 
this  work,  one  would  suppose  that  it  would  not  attract 
anybody's  attention  and  would  be  forgotten,  like  all  the 
subsequent  writings  of  this  author ;  but  something  quite 
different  takes  place.  The  publicist  who  has  written  this 
work  at  once  becomes  a  learned  authority  and  is  kept  on 
this  height  for  almost  half  a  century.  Malthus  !  Malthus's 
theory,  —  the  law  of  the  increase  of  the  population  in 
a  geometric,  and  of  the  means  of  existence  in  an  arith- 
metical proportion,  and  the  natural  and  sensible  means 


204  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

for  limiting '  the  population,  all  that  hecame  scientific, 
unquestionable  truths,  which  were  not  verified  and  were 
used  as  axioms,  for  the  purpose  of  building  further  deduc- 
tions upon  them.  Thus  acted  learned,  cultured  men ;  but 
among  the  masses  of  idle  men  there  was  expressed  a 
respectful  confidence  in  the  newly  discovered  great  laws 
of  Malthus. 

Why  did  that  happen  ?  One  would  think  that  those 
were  scientific  deductions  which  had  nothing  in  common 
with  the  instincts  of  the  crowd. 

But  this  can  only  appear  so  to  him  who  believes  that 
science  is  something  original,  like  the  church,  which  is  not 
subject  to  errors,  and  not  simply  the  inventions  of  feeble, 
erring  men,  who  only  for  importance'  sake  substitute 
the  word  "  science "  in  the  place  of  men's  thoughts  and 
words. 

It  was  sufficient  to  make  practical  deductions  from 
Malthus's  theory,  in  order  to  see  that  this  theory  was 
most  human,  with  most  definite  aims. 

The  deductions  which  resulted  directly  from  this 
theory  were  as  follows:  the  wretched  condition  of  the 
labouring  people  is  not  due  to  the  cruelty,  egotism,  and 
ignorance  of  the  rich  and  of  those  in  power,  but  it  is  so 
in  consequence  of  an  unchangeable  law,  which  is  inde- 
pendent of  men,  and  if  any  one  is  to  blame  for  it,  it 
is  the  starving  working  men  themselves:  why  are  these 
fools  born,  if  they  know  that  they  will  have  nothing  to 
eat  ?  And  so  the  rich  and  the  classes  in  power  are  not 
to  blame  for  anything,  and  may  continue  to  live  as 
before. 

And  this  deduction,  so  valuable  to  the  crowd  of  idle 
men,  had  this  effect,  that  all  the  scientists  overlooked  the 
baselessness,  irregularity,  and  complete  arbitrariness  of 
the  deductions,  and  the  crowd  of  the  learned,  that  is,  idle 
men,  knowing  instinctively  to  what  these  deductions 
would  lead,  enthusiastically  hailed  this  theory,  imposed 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  205 

apon  it  the  stamp  of  truth,  that  is,  of  science,  and  held 
on  to  it  for  half  a  century. 

Kant's  positive  philosophy  and  the  resulting  doctrine 
about  humanity  being  an  organism,  —  Darwin's  doc- 
trine of  the  law  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  which  is 
supposed  to  govern  life,  and  of  the  consequent  distinction 
of  the  human  races,  —  the  now  favourite  anthropology, 
biology,  and  sociology,  have  the  same  purpose.  All  these 
have  become  favourite  sciences,  because  they  all  serve  for 
the  justification  of  the  existing  self-liberation  of  one  set  of 
men  "from  the  human  obligation  of  labour,  and  of  their 
absorption  of  the  labour  of  others. 

All  these  theories,  as  is  always  the  case,  are  worked 
out  in  the  mysterious  sanctuaries  of  the  high  priests  and 
are  in  indefinite,  obscure  expressions  disseminated  among 
the  masses,  which  accept  them.  As  in  antiquity  all  the 
theological  intricacies,  the  justifications  of  ecclesiastic  and 
political  violence,  remained  a  special  knowledge  of  the 
priests,  while  among  the  masses  there  were  current 
the  ready  deductions,  taken  on  faith,  that  the  power 
of  the  kings,  the  clergy,  and  the  nobility  was  sacred ; 
even  so  later  the  philosophical  and  juridical  intricacies  of 
the  so-called  science  were  the  possession  of  the  priests 
of  this  science,  while  among  the  masses  were  current 
the  deductions,  taken  on  faith,  that  the  structure  of 
society  has  to  be  such  as  it  is,  and  cannot  be  other- 
wise. 

Even  so  now  the  laws  of  life  and  of  the  evolution  of 
the  organisms  are  analyzed  only  in  the  sanctuaries  of  the 
priests ;  but  among  the  masses  are  current  the  deductions, 
taken  on  faith,  that  the  division  of  labour  is  a  law  which 
is  confirmed  by  science,  and  that  so  it  must  be  :  that  some 
should  die  from  starvation,  and  work,  while  others  must 
eternally  be  idle,  and  that  this  perdition  of  some  and 
idleness  of  others  are  an  unquestionable  law  of  humanity, 
to  which  we  must  submit. 


206  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

The  current  justification  of  this  idleness  among  the 
mass  of  all  so-called  cultured  people,  with  their  various 
activities,  from  the  railroad  man  to  the  writer  and  artist, 
is  now  as  follows  : 

We,  who  have  freed  ourselves  from  the  universal 
human  obligation  of  participating  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  serve  progress,  and  so  benefit  the  whole  society 
of  men,  thus  redeeming  the  whole  harm  which  is  done  to 
the  same  people  by  exploiting  their  labour. 

This  reflection  seems  to  the  men  of  our  time  quite  dis- 
similar to  those  reflections  by  which  the  former  leisure 
classes  used  to  justify  themselves ;  just  as  the  reflection 
of  the  Eoman  emperors  and  citizens  as  to  this,  that  with- 
out them  the  cultured  world  would  perish,  seemed  to 
them  quite  apart  from  the  reflection  of  the  Egyptians  and 
the  Persians,  and  just  as  a  similar  reflection  of  the  medise- 
val  knights  and  clergy  seemed  to  them  quite  distinct  from 
the  reflection  of  the  Eomans. 

But  that  only  seems  so.  It  is  enough  to  enter  into  the 
comprehension  of  the  essence  of  the  justification  of  our 
time,  in  order  to  become  convinced  that  there  is  nothing 
new  in  it. 

It  is  only  a  little  differently  clothed,  but  it  is  the  same, 
being  based  on  the  same.  Every  justification  of  a  man 
who,  without  working,  absorbs  the  labour  of  others  —  the 
justification  of  Pharaoh  and  the  priests,  of  the  Roman  and 
mediyeval  emperors  and  their  citizens,  the  knights,  priests, 
and  the  clergy  —  is  always  composed  of  two  propositions : 
(1)  we  take  the  labour  of  the  rabble  because  we  are  spe- 
cial people,  predetermined  by  God  to  govern  the  rabble 
and  to  teach  them  the  divine  truths ;  (2)  the  people  of 
the  masses  cannot  be  the  judges  of  the  measure  of  the 
labours  which  we  take  from  them  for  the  good  which  we 
do  them,  because  the  Pharisees  said  long  ago  (John  vii. 
49),  This  people  who  knoweth  not  the  law  are  cursed. 
The  people  do  not  understand  wherein  their  good  lies,  and 


WHAT  SHALL.  WE  DO  THEN?       207 

SO  they  cannot  be  the  judges  of  the  benefit  conferred  on 
them. 

The  justification  of  our  time,  in  spite  of  its  seeming 
pecuharity,  is  by  its  essence  composed  of  the  same  two 
propositions:  (1)  we,  the  special  people,  the  cultured 
people,  are  serving  progress  and  civilization,  and  so 
confer  a  great  benefit  on  the  masses ;  (2)  the  uneducated 
masses  do  not  understand  the  benefit  which  we  are  con- 
ferring upon  them,  and  so  cannot  be  the  judges  of  it. 

We  free  ourselves  from  labour,  make  use  of  the  labour 
of  others,  and  thus  burden  the  condition  of  our  brothers, 
and  we  affirm  that  in  place  of  the  labour  we  confer  upon 
them  a  great  benefit,  of  which  they  cannot  be  the  judges. 

Is  it  not  the  same  ?  The  only  difference  is  this,  that 
formerly  it  was  the  Eoman  citizens,  the  priests,  the 
knights,  the  nobility,  that  had  the  right  to  other  people's 
labour ;  now  it  is  only  the  caste  of  people  who  call  them- 
selves cultured.  The  lie  is  the  same,  for  the  proposition 
of  the  men  who  justify  themselves  is  equally  false.  The 
lie  consists  in  this,  that  before  reflecting  on  the  benefit 
conferred  on  the  people  by  the  men  who  are  freed  from 
labour,  certain  people,  the  Pharaohs,  the  priests,  or  we, 
the  cultured  men,  put  ourselves  in  this  position  and 
maintain  it,  and  only  then  invent  a  justification  for  it. 

This  condition  of  violence,  which  one  set  of  men  exerts 
upon  others,  as  before,  so  even  now  serves  as  a  foundation 
for  everything. 

The  difference  between  our  justification  and  the  most 
ancient  one  is  only  this,  that  it  is  more  fallacious  and 
less  substantial  than  the  former. 

The  ancient  emperors  and  the  Popes  could,  if  they 
themselves  and  the  people  believed  in  their  divine  calling, 
explain  simply  why  they  were  those  people  who  should 
make  use  of  the  labours  of  others :  they  said  that  they 
were  destined  for  it  by  God,  and  that  God  had  also  pre- 
scribed   to    them  to  transmit  to   the  people   the  divine 


208  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

truths  which  were  revealed  to  them,  aud  to  govern  the 
people. 

But  the  cultured  people  of  our  time,  who  do  not  work 
with  their  hands,  by  recognizing  the  equahty  of  men,  can 
no  longer  explain  why  they  and  their  children  (for  educa- 
tion is  obtained  only  by  means  of  money,  —  of  power) 
are  those  chosen  fortunate  people  who  are  called  to  con- 
fer a  certain  light  benefit,  and  not  other  people  among  the 
millions  who  perish  by  the  hundred  and  the  thousand, 
while  supporting  the  possibihty  of  their  culture. 

Their  only  justification  is  this,  that  they  —  the  men 
of  the  present  time,  in  place  of  the  evil  which  they  do  to 
the  people  by  freeing  themselves  from  labour  and  absorb- 
ing theirs,  confer  on  the  people  a  benefit  which  is  incom- 
prehensible to  them,  and  which  redeems  all  the  harm  that 
is  done  to  them. 


XXVIL 

The  proposition  by  which  men  who  have  liberated 
themselves  from  labour  justify  their  liberation,  will  in 
its  simplest  and  at  the  same  time  its  most  precise  ex- 
pression be  like  this :  we,  the  people  who  are  in  a 
position,  by  having  freed  ourselves  from  labour,  to  make 
use  through  violence  of  the  labour  of  other  men,  in  con- 
sequence of  this  position  of  ours  confer  a  benefit  on  them, 
those  other  people ;  or,  in  other  words :  certain  people, 
in  return  for  the  palpable  and  comprehensible  harm 
which  they  do  to  others  in  forcibly  making  use  of 
their  labours  and  thus  increasing  the  difficulty  of  their 
struggle  with  Nature,  confer  upon  them  a  benefit,  which 
is  impalpable  and  incomprehensible  to  them.  This  prop- 
osition is  very  strauge ;  but  the  people  of  former  times 
and  of  the  present,  who  sit  on  the  necks  of  the  working 
people,  believe  in  it  and  ease  their  consciences  with  it. 

Let  us  see  in  what  manner  this  proposition  is  in  our 
day  justified  among  the  various  classes  who  have  eman- 
cipated themselves  from  labour. 

I  serve  people  by  my  political  or  ecclesiastic  activity, 
as  a  king,  a  minister  of  state,  a  bishop ;  I  serve  people 
by  my  commercial  or  industrial  labour  ;  I  serve  people  by 
my  scientific  or  artistic  activity.  We  are  all  with  our 
activity  as  indispensable  to  the  masses  as  they  are  in- 
dispensable to  us. 

Thus  say  the  various  men  of  our  time,  who  have 
emancipated  themselves  from  labour. 

Let  us  successively  analyze  the  bases  on  which  they 
assert  the  usefulness  of  their  activities. 

209 


210  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

There  can  be  but  two  signs  of  the  usefulness  of  one 
man's  activity  for  another:  the  external  one,  —  the  rec- 
ognition of  the  usefulness  of  the  activity  by  him  who 
is  benefited,  and  the  internal  one,  —  the  desire  of  be- 
ing useful  to  another,  which  lies  at  the  base  of  the 
activity  of  him  who  confers  the  benefit. 

The  men  of  the  state  (I  include  among  this  number 
the  ecclesiastics  who  are  established  by  the  government) 
are  useful  to  those  men  whom  they  govern. 

An  emperor,  king,  president  of  a  republic,  prime  minis- 
ter, minister  of  justice,  minister  of  war,  of  education,  a 
bishop,  and  all  their  subordinates,  who  serve  the  state, 
live,  by  having  freed  themselves  from  the  struggle  of 
humanity  for  life  and  by  imposing  the  whole  burden 
of  the  struggle  on  the  other  people,  on  the  ground  that 
their  activity  redeems  them. 

Let  us  apply  the  first  sign :  is  the  benefit  conferred  by 
this  activity  recognized  by  those  labouring  people  upon 
whom  the  activity  of  the  men  of  state  is  directly 
exerted  ? 

Yes,  it  is  :  the  majority  of  men  regard  the  political 
activity  as  indispensable  to  themselves,  —  the  majority 
recognize  the  usefulness  of  this  activity  in  principle ;  but 
in  all  its  known  manifestations,  in  all  the  known  special 
cases,  every  one  of  the  institutions  and  of  the  actions  of 
this  activity  meets,  in  the  midst  of  those  men  for  whose 
benefit  it  is  exercised,  not  only  a  denial  of  a  benefit  con- 
ferred, but  also  the  assertion  that  this  activity  is  harmful 
and  disastrous. 

There  is  no  political  and  no  social  activity  which  by 
many  men  is  not  considered  harmful :  the  courts,  banks. 
County  Councils,  township  offices,  pohce,  clerg}%  every 
political  activity  from  that  of  the  highest  power  down  to 
that  of  the  rural  officer  and  policeman,  from  that  of  the 
bishop  to  that  of  the  sexton,  is  by  one  part  of  men  con- 
sidered useful,  and  by  the  other  harmful.     And  this  does 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  211 

not  take  place  in  Kussia  alone,  but  in  the  whole  world 
also,  in  France,  and  in  America. 

The  whole  activity  of  the  Eepubhcan  party  is  con- 
sidered harmful  by  the  Kadical  party,  and  vice  versa,  the 
wliole  activity  of  the  Eadical  party,  if  the  power  is  in  its 
hands,  is  considered  harmful  by  the  Eepublican  party  and 
by  others. 

And  not  only  is  the  whole  activity  of  the  men  of  state 
never  considered  useful  by  all  men,  —  this  activity  has 
also  this  property,  that  it  has  always  to  be  exerted  by  the 
use  of  violence,  and  that,  to  obtain  this  benefit,  there  are 
.necessary  murders,  capital  punishments,  jails,  compulsory 
taxes,  and  so  forth. 

And  so  it  turns  out  that  the  usefulness  of  the  political 
activity  is  not  recognized  by  all  men  and  is  always  denied 
by  one  part  of  men,  and  that  moreover  this  usefulness  has 
the  property  of  always  finding  its  expression  in  violence. 
And  so  the  usefulness  of  the  political  activity  cannot  be 
confirmed  by  the  fact  that  it  is  recognized  by  those  men 
for  whom  it  is  intended. 

Let  us  apply  the  second  sign.  Let  us  ask  the  men  of 
state,  from  the  king  down  to  the  policeman,  from  the 
president  down  to  the  secretary,  and  from  the  patriarch 
down  to  the  sexton,  inviting  their  sincere  answer,  whether 
they,  in  holding  their  offices,  have  in  view  the  benefit 
which  they  wish  to  confer  on  people,  or  whether  they 
have  other  aims ;  whether,  in  their  desire  to  occupy  the 
post  of  king,  president,  minister,  or  rural  officer,  of  a  sex- 
ton, or  a  teacher,  they  are  impelled  by  a  striving  for  other 
people's  benefit  or  for  their  own  personal  advantage. 

The  answer  of  conscientious  men  will  be  that  their  chief 
impulse  is  their  personal  advantage. 

And  so  it  turns  out  that  one  class  of  men,  which  ex- 
ploits the  labours  of  others,  who  perish  in  this  labour, 
is  redeeming  this  unquestionable  harm  with  an  activity 
which  by  many  people  is  always  regarded  as  harmful,  and 


212  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

not  useful,  which  cannot  be  freely  received  by  the  people, 
but  must  always  be  enforced  by  violence,  and  the  aim 
of  which  is  not  the  benefit  of  others,  but  the  personal 
advantage  of  those  men  who  exert  it. 

What,  then,  is  confirmed  by  the  assumption  that  the 
political  activity  is  useful  to  men  ? 

Only  this,  that  those  men  who  exert  it  are  firmly  con- 
vinced that  it  is  useful,  and  that  this  activity  has  always 
existed ;  but  there  have  always  existed,  not  only  ex- 
tremely useless,  but  even  harmful  institutions,  such  as 
slavery,  prostitution,  and  wars.  Industrialists  —  includ- 
ing in  this  term  merchants,  manufacturers,  railroad  men, 
bankers,  and  agriculturists  —  believe  in  this,  that  they 
confer  a  benefit  which  unquestionably  redeems  the  harm 
done  by  them. 

On  what  grounds  do  they  think  so  ? 

In  reply  to  the  question  as  to  who  and  what  people 
recognize  the  usefulness  of  their  activity,  the  men  of  state, 
with  the  inclusion  of  the  clericals,  could  point  to  thou- 
sands and  millions  of  working  people,  who  in  principle 
recognize  the  usefulness  of  the  political  and  clerical 
activity  ;  but  who  will  be  pointed  out  to  us  by  the  bank- 
ers, manufacturers  of  whiskey,  velvet,  bronzes,  mirrors, 
to  say  nothing  of  cannon  ?  Who  will  be  pointed  out 
by  the  merchants,  agriculturists,  when  we  ask  these 
whether  the  benefit  which  they  confer  is  recognized  by 
public  opinion  ? 

If  some  people  are  found  who  recognize  the  production 
of  cottons,  rails,  beer,  and  similar  articles  as  useful,  there 
will  be  found  an  even  greater  number  of  men  who  recog- 
nize the  production  of  these  articles  as  harmful.  The 
activity  of  the  merchants,  who  advance  the  price  of 
articles,  and  of  the  landed  proprietors,  will  not  even  be 
defended  by  any  person.  Besides,  this  activity  is  always 
connected  with  harm  to  the  labourers  and  with  violence, 
which,  though  less  direct  than  the  political  violence,  is  as 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       213 

cruel  in  its  consequences,  since  the  industrial  and  com- 
mercial activities  are  all  based  on  the  exploitation  of  want 
in  every  form  :  on  its  exploitation  for  the  purpose  of  com- 
pelhng  the  labourers  to  do  hard  and  undesirable  work; 
on  the  exploitation  of  the  same  want  for  the  purpose  of 
purchasing  commodities  at  a  low  price  and  selling  articles 
of  necessity  to  the  people  at  the  highest  price;  on  the 
exploitation  of  this  want  for  the  purpose  of  exacting 
interest  on  money.  No  matter  from  what  side  we  may 
view  their  activity,  we  shall  see  that  the  benefit  exerted 
by  the  industrialists  is  not  recognized  by  those  for  whom 
it  is  exerted,  either  in  principle,  or  in  special  cases,  and  in 
general  is  directly  recognized  as  harmful. 

But  if  we  apply  the  second  sign,  and  ask  what  the 
impelling  cause  of  the  activity  of  the  industrialists  is,  we 
shall  receive  an  even  more  definite  answer  than  in  respect 
to  the  activity  of  the  men  of  state. 

If  a  man  of  state  says  that  in  addition  to  his  personal 
advantage  he  has  in  view  the  common  good,  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  disbelieve  him,  and  each  of  us  knows  such  men, 
but  an  industrialist  by  the  very  essence  of  his  business 
cannot  have  in  view  the  common  good,  and  will  be  con- 
sidered ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  his  fellows  if  in  his  busi- 
ness he  shall  pursue  any  other  aim  than  the  increase  of 
his  wealth  or  its  maintenance. 

Thus  the  labouring  people  do  not  consider  the  activity 
of  the  industrialists  useful  to  themselves. 

This  activity  is  connected  with  violence  against  the 
labourers,  and  the  aim  of  this  activity  is  not  the  benefit 
of  the  working  people,  but  always  personal  advantage, 
and  suddenly  —  strange  to  say  —  these  industrialists  are 
so  convinced  of  the  benefit  which  they  confer  on  people 
by  their  activity  that  in  the  name  of  this  imaginary  benefit 
they  do  undoubted,  obvious  harm  to  these  labourers  by 
emancipating  themselves  from  labour  and  absorbing  the 
labour  of  the  working  classes. 


214  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

The  men  of  science  and  of  art  have  freed  themselves 
from  labour  and  have  imposed  this  labour  on  others  and 
live  with  a  calm  conscience,  being  firmly  convinced  of 
this,  that  they  confer  on  others  a  benefit  which  redeems 
all  that. 

On  what  is  their  conviction  based  ? 

We  shall  ask  them,  as  we  asked  the  men  of  state  and 
the  industrialists,  whether  the  labouring  people,  all  of 
them,  or  even  a  majority  of  them,  recognize  the  benefit 
which  art  and  science  confer  upon  them. 

The  answer  will  be  a  very  lamentable  one. 

The  activity  of  the  men  of  state  and  of  the  church  is 
recognized  as  useful  in  principle  by  nearly  everybody,  and 
in  application  by  the  greater  half  of  those  working  people 
upon  whom  it  is  directed  ;  the  activity  of  the  industriahsts 
is  recognized  by  a  small  number  of  working  people ;  but 
the  activity  of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  is  not  recog- 
nized as  useful  by  anybody  among  the  labouring  people. 
The  usefulness  of  this  activity  is  recognized  only  by  those 
who  exert  it  or  wish  to  exert  it.  The  working  people  — 
those  who  carrv  on  their  shoulders  the  whole  labour  of 
life  and  feed  and  clothe  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  — 
cannot  recognize  the  activity  of  these  men  as  useful  for 
themselves,  because  they  cannot  even  have  any  conception 
about  this  activity  which  is  so  useful  to  them.  This 
activity  presents  itself  to  the  labouring  people  as  useless 
and  even  corrupting. 

Thus  the  labouring  people  look  without  exception  upon 
the  universities,  libraries,  conservatories,  picture-galleries, 
museums,  and  theatres,  which  are  built  at  their  expense. 
A  labouring  man  looks  so  definitely  upon  this  activity  as 
harmful  that  he  does  not  send  his  children  to  school,  and, 
to  compel  the  masses  to  take  part  in  this  activity,  it 
became  necessary  everywhere  to  introduce  the  law  of 
compulsory  school  attendance.  A  labouring  man  always 
looks  inimically  upon  this  activity,  and  will  stop  looking 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       215 

upon  it  in  such  a  way  only  when  he  himself  ceases  to 
be  a  labourer  and,  by  means  of  his  earnings  and  later 
by  the  means  of  the  so-called  culture,  passes  from 
the  labouring  class  into  that  of  men  who  live  by 
sitting  on  the  shoulders  of  others.  And  although  the 
activity  of  the  men  of  sciences  and  of  arts  is  not  recog- 
nized and  cannot  be  recognized  by  any  one  among  the 
labouring  people,  the  labourers  are  none  the  less  compelled 
to  bring  sacrifices  in  favour  of  this  activity. 

A  man  of  state  sends  another  directly  to  the  guillotine 
or  to  jail ;  an  industrialist,  making  use  of  the  labours  of 
another,  takes  the  last  away  from  him,  leaving  him  the 
choice  between  starvation  and  pernicious  work ;  but  a 
man  of  science  or  of  art  apparently  does  not  compel,  but 
only  offers  his  wares  to  those  wdio  want  to  take  them ; 
but,  in  order  to  produce  his  wares,  which  are  undesirable 
to  the  working  people,  he  takes  from  them  by  force, 
through  the  men  of  state,  the  greater  part  of  their  labour 
for  buildings  and  their  maintenance,  for  academies,  univer- 
sities, gymnasia,  schools,  museums,  libraries,  conservatories, 
and  for  the  support  of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art. 

And  if  we  ask  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  about  the 
aim  which  they  pursue  in  their  activities,  we  get  the  most 
remarkable  answers.  A  man  of  state  could  have  answered 
that  his  aim  is  the  common  good,  and  there  is  in  this  a 
grain  of  truth  which  is  confirmed  by  public  opinion.  But 
the  answer  of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  at  once 
startles  us  by  its  groundlessness  and  impudence. 

The  men  of  the  sciences  and  of  tlie  arts  say,  without 
adducing  any  proof  for  it,  just  as  the  priests  used  to  say 
in  antiquity,  that  their  activity  is  most  important  and 
most  necessary  for  all  men,  and  that  without  this  activity 
all  humanity  would  perish.  They  affirm  that  it  is  so, 
although  no  man  but  they  themselves  understands  or 
recognizes  their  activity,  and  although  true  science  and 
true  art,  by  their  own  definition,  ought  to  have  no  aim 


216  WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

of  usefulness.  The  men  of  science  and  of  art  abandon 
themselves  to  their  favourite  occupation,  without  caring 
what  benefit  people  will  derive  from  it,  and  are  always 
convinced  that  they  are  doing  a  most  important  and 
necessary  work  for  humanity ;  so  that,  while  a  sincere 
man  of  state,  in  recognizing  the  fact  that  the  chief  motive 
of  his  activity  is  his  personal  impulses,  tries  as  much  as 
possible  to  be  useful  to  the  labouring  people,  and  the 
industrialist,  in  recognizing  the  selfishness  of  his  activity, 
tries  to  give  it  the  character  of  a  common  good,  the  men 
of  the  arts  and  the  sciences  do  not  even  consider  it 
necessary  to  cloak  themselves  with  a  tendency  for  what 
is  useful :  they  even  deny  the  aim  of  the  useful ;  so  con- 
vinced are  they,  not  of  the  usefulness,  but  of  the  sacred- 
ness,  of  their  occupation. 

And  so  it  turns  out  that  a  third  division  of  men,  who 
have  emancipated  themselves  from  labour  and  have  im- 
posed it  upon  others,  are  busying  themselves  with  subjects 
wliich  are  completely  incomprehensible  to  the  labouring 
people,  and  which  the  masses  regard  as  trifles  and  fre- 
quently as  harmful  trifles ;  and  they  busy  themselves 
with  these  subjects  without  the  least  consideration  of  their 
usefulness  to  men,  but  only  for  their  own  amusement, 
being  for  some  reason  completely  convinced  that  their 
activity  will  always  be  such  that  the  labouring  people 
cannot  live  without  it. 

Men  have  emancipated  themselves  from  labour  for  life 
and  have  unloaded  this  labour  on  people  who  are  perishing 
in  this  labour ;  men  exploit  this  labour,  and  affirm  that 
their  occupations,  which  are  incomprehensible  to  all  other 
men  and  are  not  directed  upon  the  usefulness  of  men, 
redeem  all  the  harm  which  they  do  to  men  by  eman- 
cipating themselves  from  the  labour  for  life  and  by 
absorbing  the  labour  of  others. 

To  redeem  that  unquestionable  and  obvious  harm 
which  the  men  of  state  do  to  people  by  their  emancipa- 


WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  217 

tion  from  the  struggle  with  Nature  and  the  exploitation 
of  the  labour  of  others,  they  do  to  people  another  obvious, 
unquestionable  harm,  —  all  kiuds  of  violence. 

To  redeem  that  unquestiouable  and  obvious  harm 
which  the  industrialists  do  to  people  by  exploiting  their 
labour,  they  strive  to  acquire  for  themselves,  consequently 
to  take  away  from  others,  as  much  wealth  as  possible, 
that  is,  as  much  of  the  labour  of  others  as  possible. 

The  men  of  science  and  of  the  arts,  in  return  for  that 
unquestionable  and  obvious  harm  which  they  do  to  the 
labouring  people,  busy  themselves  with  matters  which  are 
incomprehensible  to  the  labouring  people,  and  which, 
according  to  their  own  assertion,  to  be  real,  must  not 
have  usefulness  in  view,  but  that  toward  which  they 
feel  themselves  drawn.  And  so  all  these  men  are  fully 
convinced  that  their  right  to  exploit  other  people's  labour 
is  unshakable. 

It  would  seem  to  be  obvious  that  aU  those  people  who 
have  emancipated  themselves  from  the  labour  of  life  have 
no  grounds  for  this.  But  strange  to  say,  these  people 
believe  firmly  in  their  righteousness  and  live  as  they  do 
with  a  calm  conscience. 

There  must  be  some  foundation,  there  must  be  some 
false  creed,  at  the  basis  of  such  a  terrible  delusion. 


XXVIII. 

Indeed,  at  the  basis  of  the  position  in  which  people 
are  who  Hve  by  the  labour  of  others,  lies  not  only  a 
belief,  but  a  whole  creed,  and  not  one,  but  three  creeds, 
which  during  the  ages  have  grown  up  by  superposition 
and  have  been  compacted  into  one  monstrous  deception, 
—  humbug,  as  the  English  say,  —  which  conceals  from 
men  their  unrighteousness. 

The  oldest  creed  in  our  world,  which  justified  men's 
defection  from  their  fundamental  duty  of  the  labour  of 
life,  was  the  church-Christian  creed,  according  to  which 
men  are  by  God's  will  differentiated  from  one  another,  as 
the  sun  differs  from  the  moon  and  the  stars,  and  the 
stars  among  themselves ;  some  people  are  commanded  by 
God  to  have  power  over  all  men,  others  over  many, 
others  again  over  a  few,  while  others  are  commanded 
by  God  to  obey. 

This  creed,  though  now  tottering  on  its  foundations, 
still  continues  to  act  on  people  from  inertia,  so  that  many, 
who  do  not  recognize  the  doctrine  itself,  none  the  less  are 
guided  by  it. 

The  second  justificatory  creed  of  our  world  is  the  one 
which  I  cannot  call  otherwise  than  the  politico-philosoph- 
ical creed.  According  to  this  creed,  which  was  perfectly 
expressed  in  Hegel,  everything  which  exists  is  rational, 
and  the  order  of  things  which  was  established  and  is 
maintained  by  people  was  not  established  and  is  not  main- 
tained by  people  but  is  the  one  possible  form  of  the 
manifestation  of  the  spirit,  or  in  general  of  the  life  of 
humanity.       And    this    creed   is  in   our  time  no  longer 

218 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN  ?  219 

shared  by  meu  who  guide  pubhc  opmion,  and  mauitaina 
itself  only  through  inertia. 

The  last,  now  reiguing  creed,  the  one  on  which  the 
justification  of  the  leading  meu  of  state,  of  industry,  of 
science,  and  of  art  is  based  in  our  day,  is  the  scientific 
ci-eed,  not  in  the  simple  meaning  of  this  word,  which  des- 
ignates knowledge  in  general,  but  in  the  sense  of  one 
special  kind  of  knowledge,  both  as  to  form  and  to  con- 
tents. 

On  this  new  creed,  which  is  called  science,  is  mainly 
based  the  justification  which  iii  our  day  conceals  from 
the  idle  people  their  defection  from  their  calling. 

This  new  creed  made  its  appearance  in  Europe  simul- 
taneously with  the  appearance  of  a  large  class  of  rich  and 
idle  people,  who  serve  neither  the  church,  nor  the  state, 
and  who  needed  a  justification  corresponding  to  their 
position. 

Not  very  long  ago,  previous  to  the  French  Eevolution, 
all  the  leisure  people  in  Europe,  to  have  the  right  to  ex- 
ploit the  labours  of  others,  were  compelled  to  have  some 
very  definite  occupations :  they  had  to  serve  the  church, 
the  government,  and  the  army.  The  men  who  served 
the  government  ruled  the  people ;  those  who  served  the 
church  taught  them  the  divine  truths ;  those  who  served 
the  army  defended  the  people. 

Only  three  classes,  the  clergy,  the  rulers,  the  mihtary, 
regarded  themselves  as  having  the  right  to  make  use  of 
the  labours  of  the  masses,  and  could  always  bring  forward 
their  service  to  the  people ;  all  the  other  rich  people,  who 
did  not  have  this  justification,  were  despised  and,  feeling 
their  unrighteousness,  were  ashamed  of  their  wealth  and 
idleness. 

But  the  time  came  when  this  class  of  the  rich,  who 
were  subject  neither  to  the  clerg}',  nor  to  the  government, 
nor  to  the  army,  multiphed,  thanks  to  the  vices  of  the 
three  estates,  and  became  a  power,  and  these  men  neede(i 


220  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN  ? 

a  justification.  And  the  justification  made  its  appear- 
ance. 

Less  than  a  century  passed,  when  all  these  men,  who 
serve  neither  the  government,  nor  the  church,  and  who  take 
no  part  in  these  matters,  not  only  acquired  the  same  rights 
for  the  exploitation  of  the  labours  of  others,  as  the  former 
estates  had  possessed,  aud  so  stopped  being  ashamed  of 
their  wealth  and  idleness,  but  also  began  to  consider  their 
position  fully  justified.  There  has  in  our  day  evolved  an 
enormous  number  of  such  men,  and  their  number  is  all 
the  time  growing.  And  what  is  remarkable  is  this,  that 
these  new  men,  the  legality  of  whose  emancipation  from 
labour  was  even  recently  not  recognized,  now  are  the  only 
ones  who  consider  themselves  fully  justified,  and  they  at- 
tack the  three  former  classes,  the  servants  of  the  church, 
of  the  state,  and  of  the  army,  recognizing  their  hberatiou 
from  labour  as  irregular  and  their  activity  even  as  harmful. 

And  what  is  still  more  remarkable  is  this,  that  the 
former  servants  of  the  state,  the  church,  and  the  army  no 
longer  fall  back  on  their  divine  election  or  even  ou  the 
philosophical  significance  of  the  state,  which  is  supposed 
to  be  necessary  for  the  manifestation  of  individuahty,  but 
even  throw  down  these  supports,  which  have  held  them 
up  for  so  long  a  time,  and  seek  those  supports  on  which 
stands  the  now  ruling  class,  which  has  discovered  this  new 
justification,  and  at  the  head  of  which  stand  the  learned 
and  the  artists.  If  now  a  man  of  state  occasionally 
through  his  old  reminiscence  defends  his  position  by  say- 
ing that  he  was  destined  for  it  by  God,  or  that  the  state 
is  a  form  of  the  evolution  of  the  individual,  he  does  so 
because  he  has  fallen  behind  the  times,  and  he  feels  him- 
self that  nobody  believes  him.  In  order  firmly  to  defend 
himself,  he  has  now  to  find,  not  theological  or  philosoph- 
ical, but  new  scientific  supports.  It  is  necessary  to  ad- 
vance the  principle  of  the  nationalities  or  of  organic 
evolution,  —  it  is  necessary  to  keep  on  the  good  side  of 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  221 

the  ruling  class,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  necessary 
to  keep  on  the  good  side  of  the  clergy,  as  at  the  end  of 
last  century  it  was  necessary  to  keep  on  the  good  side  of 
the  philosophers  (Frederick,  Catherine). 

If  a  rich  man  now  at  times,  from  old  habit,  speaks  of 
the  divine  providence  wliich  chose  him  to  become  a  rich 
man,  or  of  the  significance  of  aristocracy  for  the  good  of 
the  state,  he  speaks  so  because  he  is  beliind  the  times. 
In  order  firmly  to  justify  himself,  he  must  advance  his 
cooperation  with  the  progress  of  civiHzation  by  the  per- 
fection of  the  means  of  production,  the  cheapening  of  the 
necessary  commodities,  the  establishment  of  international 
amity.  A  rich  man  must  think  and  speak  in  scientific 
language,  and,  as  formerly  sacrifices  were  brought  to  the 
clergy,  so  now  he  brings  them  to  the  ruling  class,  —  he 
must  publish  periodicals  and  books,  found  galleries,  musical 
societies,  or  a  kindergarten,  or  technical  schools. 

But  the  ruling  class  is  that  of  the  learned  and  the 
artists  of  a  given  tendency :  they  have  the  complete 
justification  of  their  emancipation  from  labour,  and  on 
their  justification,  as  formerly  on  the  theological  and 
later  on  the  philosophical  justification,  is  now  based  every 
justification,  and  they  now  distribute  to  the  other  classes 
the  diplomas  for  justification. 

The  class  which  now  has  a  full  justification  in  its 
emancipation  from  labour  is  the  class  of  the  men  of 
science,  especially  of  experimental,  positive,  critical,  evolu- 
tionary science,  and  the  class  of  artists  who  work  in  the 
same  direction. 

If  a  learned  man  or  an  artist  from  old  habit  now  speaks 
of  prophecy,  revelation,  or  the  manifestation  of  the  spirit, 
he  does  so  because  he  has  fallen  behind  the  times,  and  he 
does  not  justify  himself  :  in  order  to  stand  firmly,  he  must 
in  some  way  articulate  his  activity  with  the  experimental, 
positive,  critical  science,  and  place  this  science  at  the 
foundation  of  his  activity. 


222       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ? 

In  that  case  alone  will  the  science  or  the  art  with 
which  he  busies  himself  be  real,  and  he  himself  in  our 
day  be  able  to  stand  on  imperturbable  foundations,  and 
no  doubt  exist  any  longer  as  to  the  benefit  which  it 
confers  on  humanity. 

On  the  experimental,  critical,  positive  science  is  now 
based  the  justification  of  all  men  who  have  emancipated 
themselves  from  labour. 

The  theological  and  philosophical  justifications  have 
outlived  their  usefulness,  and  they  diffidently  and  bashfully 
make  themselves  known  and  try  to  give  way  to  the  scien- 
tific justifications ;  but  the  scientific  justification  boldly 
overturns  and  destroys  what  is  left  of  the  former  justifica- 
tions, everywhere  takes  their  place,  and,  with  the  con- 
viction of  its  imperturbability,  raises  its  head  high. 

The  theological  justification  said  that  men  according 
to  their  destination  are  called,  some  to  command,  others 
to  obey,  some  to  live  in  abundance,  others  in  want ;  and 
so  he  who  believes  in  the  revelation  of  God  cannot  doubt 
the  legality  of  the  state  of  those  men  who  by  the  will  of 
God  are  called  to  command  and  be  rich. 

The  philosophico-political  justification  said  :  "  The  state 
with  all  its  institutions  and  different  classes  of  men  accord- 
ing to  privileges  and  to  property  is  that  historic  form 
which  is  necessary  for  the  regular  manifestation  of  the 
spirit  in  humanity,  and  so  the  position  by  privilege  and 
property,  which  one  occupies  in  the  state  and  in  society, 
must  be  such  for  the  regular  life  of  humanity." 

The  scientific  theory  says :  "  All  that  is  nonsense  and 
superstition ;  one  is  the  fruit  of  the  thought  of  the 
theological  period  of  the  life  of  humanity,  the  other  is  that 
of  the  metaphysical  period.  For  the  study  of  the  laws  of 
the  life  of  human  societies  there  is  only  one  unquestionable 
method,  —  the  method  of  the  positive,  experimental,  crit- 
ical science.  Nothing  but  sociology,  which  is  based  on 
biology,  which  in  its  turn  is  based  on  all  the  other  positive 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  223 

sciences,  can  give  us  the  laws  of  the  life  of  humanity. 
Humanity,  or  the  human  societies,  are  organisms,  all  ready 
or  in  the  act  of  formation  and  subject  to  all  the  laws  of  the 
evolution  of  the  organisms.  One  of  these  chief  laws  is  the 
division  of  the  functions  of  labour  among  the  particles  of 
the  organs.  If  some  people  command  and  others  obey, 
if  some  live  in  abundance  and  others  in  want,  this  takes 
place,  not  by  the  will  of  God,  not  because  the  state  is  a 
form  of  the  manifestation  of  the  individual,  but  because 
in  the  societies,  as  in  the  organisms,  takes  place  the 
division  of  labour  which  is  indispensalJe  for  the  life  of 
the  whole :  some  men  perform  in  societies  the  muscular 
labour,  while  others  do  the  mental  labour." 

On  this  creed  is  based  the  reigning  justification  of  our 
time. 


XXIX. 

A  NEW  teaching  is  preached  by  Christ  and  is  recorded 
in  the  gospels.  This  teaching  is  persecuted,  and  is  not 
accepted,  and  they  invent  the  history  of  the  fall  of  the 
first  man  and  of  the  first  angel,  and  this  invention  is 
accepted  as  Christ's  teaching.  This  invention  is  insipid, 
has  no  foundation,  but  from  it  inevitably  results  the  con- 
clusion that  a  man  may  live  badly  and  yet  consider  him- 
self justified  by  Christ,  and  this  conclusion  is  so  opportune 
for  those  feeble  men  who  do  not  like  any  moral  labour, 
that  this  invention  is  immediately  accepted  as  a  truth 
and  even  as  a  divine,  revealed  truth,  although  nowhere 
in  what  is  called  revelation  is  there  even  a  hint  concern- 
ing this,  and  the  invention  is  put  at  the  base  of  the 
millennial  labour  of  the  learned  theologians,  who  upon  it 
construct  their  theories. 

The  learned  theologians  break  up  into  sects  and  begin 
to  deny  the  structures  of  one  another,  and  they  begin  to 
feel  that  they  themselves  are  becoming  entangled  and  do 
not  understand  what  they  say ;  but  the  crowd  demands 
of  them  a  confirmation  of  their  favourite  doctrine,  and 
they  pretend  that  they  understand  and  believe  what  they 
say,  and  continue  to  preach.  But  the  time  comes  when 
the  arguments  prove  useless,  the  crowd  looks  into  the 
sanctuaries  of  the  priests,  and  to  its  astonishment  sees,  in 
place  of  the  solemn  and  undoubted  truths  that  the  theo- 
logical mysteries  seemed  to  it  to  be,  that  there  has  never 
been  there  anything  but  the  grossest  deception,  and 
marvels  at  its  blindness. 

The  same  has  happened  with  philosophy,  not  in  the 

224 


WHAT    SHALL   WE    DO    THEN?  225 

sense  of  the  wisdom  of  a  Confucius,  a  Socrates,  an  Epic- 
tetus,  but  with  the  professorial  philosophy,  whenever  it 
pandered  to  the  instincts  of  the  idle  rich. 

Not  long  ago  there  reigued  in  the  learned  world  the 
philosophy  of  the  spirit,  according  to  which  it  appeared 
that  everything  which  existed  was  rational,  that  there 
was  neither  bad  nor  good,  and  that  a  man  must  not 
struggle  with  evil,  but  only  manifest  his  spirit,  —  one  in 
military  service,  another  in  a  court,  a  third  on  the  violin. 

There  have  been  many  different  expressions  of  human 
wisdom,  and  these  manifestations  have  been  known  to 
the  men  of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  have  known 
Eousseau,  and  Pasqual,  and  Lessing,  and  Spinoza,  and  all 
the  wisdom  of  antiquity,  but  nobody's  wisdom  has  taken 
possession  of  the  crowd.  It  cannot  even  be  said  that  the 
success  of  Hegel's  philosophy  depended  on  the  harmony 
of  his  theories.  There  have  been  other  harmonious 
theories,  such  as  those  of  Fichte  and  Schopenhauer. 
There  was  but  one  reason  why  this  teaching  for  a  short 
time  became  the  creed  of  the  whole  world  ;  the  reason 
was,  like  the  reason  of  the  success  of  the  theory  of  the 
fall  and  redemption  of  man,  that  the  deductions  from  this 
philosophical  theory  pandered  to  the  weaknesses  of  men. 
They  said :  everything  is  rational,  everything  is  good, 
nobody  is  to  blame  for  anything.  And  just  as  the  theo- 
logians did  with  the  theory  of  redemption,  so  the  philoso- 
phers built  their  tower  of  Babel  on  Hegelian  foundations 
(and  even  now  a  few  men  who  are  behind  the  times  are 
sitting  on  it),  and  in  the  same  way  their  tongues  became 
confused,  and  they  felt  that  they  themselves  did  not 
know  what  they  were  saying,  and,  without  carrying  the 
dirt  out  of  their  house,  tried  just  as  carefully  to  maintain 
their  authority  before  the  crowd,  and  the  crowd  asked  as 
much  as  before  for  a  confirmation  of  what  was  opportune 
for  it,  and  believed  that  what  to  it  appeared  obscure  and 
contradictory  was  as  clear  as  day  up  there,  on  the  philo- 


226  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

sophical  heights.  And  again  the  time  came  when  even 
this  theory  was  worn  out,  and  in  its  place  there  appeared 
a  new  theory,  and  the  old  one  became  useless,  and  the 
crowd  peeped  into  the  mysterious  sanctuaries  of  the  priests, 
and  saw  that  there  was  nothing  there,  and  never  had  been 
anything  but  very  obscure  and  senseless  w^ords.  This 
took  place  within  my  memory. 

When  I  began  to  live,  Hegehanism  was  the  foundation 
of  everything :  it  was  in  the  air,  found  its  expression  in 
newspaper  and  periodical  articles,  in  novels,  in  treatises, 
in  art,  in  history,  in  sermons,  in  conversations.  A  man 
who  did  not  know  Hegel  had  no  right  to  speak  :  he  who 
wanted  to  know  the  truth  studied  Hegel.  Everything 
leaned  on  him,  and  suddenly  forty  years  have  passed, 
and  nothing  is  left  of  him,  and  there  is  no  mention  even 
made  of  him,  as  though  he  had  never  existed.  And  what 
is  most  remarkable  is  that,  like  pseudo-Christianity,  Hege- 
liauism  fell,  not  because  somebody  overthrew  it,  —  no,  as 
it  was,  so  it  still  is,  —  but  because  it  suddenly  became 
evident  that  the  learned,  cultured  world  had  no  use  for 
either. 

If  we  now  talk  to  a  modern  cultured  man  about  the 
fall  of  the  angel  and  of  Adam,  and  about  the  redemption, 
he  will  not  even  try  to  dispute  and  prove  the  injustice  of 
it,  but  will  ask  in  perplexity :  "  What  angel  ?  Why 
Adam  ?  What  redemption  ?  What  do  I  want  with  it  ?  " 
The  same  is  true  of  Hegelianism.  The  modern  man  will 
not  dispute,  but  will  only  marvel.  "  What  spirit  ?  Where 
does  it  come  from  ?  Why  is  it  manifested  ?  What  do  I 
want  with  it  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  the  learned  men  of  the  present  will  say,  "  that 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  the  delirium  of  the  theo- 
logical and  of  the  metaphysical  periods  ;  now  w^e  have 
the  critical,  positive  science,  which  will  not  deceive  us, 
because  it  is  all  based  on  induction  and  experience.  Now 
our  knowledge  is  not  shaky  as  it  used  to  be,  and  only 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       227 

on  our  path  lies  the  solution  of  all  the  questions  of 
humanity." 

But  it  is  precisely  what  the  theologians  used  to  say, 
and  they  were  certainly  no  fools ;  —  we  know  that  there 
were  among  them  people  of  very  great  intellect;  and 
precisely  the  same,  and  not  with  less  conviction,  and  not 
with  less  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  crowd  of  the  so- 
called  cultured  people,  did  the  Hegelians  say  within  my 
memory.  And  certainly  such  men  as  our  Hertzen,  Stan- 
k^vich,  and  Byelinski  were  no  fools.  Why,  then,  has  this 
remarkable  phenomenon  happened  that  clever  people  have 
with  the  greatest  conviction  preached,  and  the  crowd 
has  with  awe  received,  such  unfounded  and  barren  doc- 
trines ?  There  is  just  one  reason  for  it,  and  it  is  this, 
that  the  doctrines  preached  justified  the  people  in  their 
bad  hves. 

Is  not  the  same  the  reason  of  the  self-confidence  of  the 
men  of  the  positive,  critical,  experimental  science,  and  of 
the  awed  relation  of  the  crowd  to  what  they  preach  ?  At 
first  it  appears  strange  how  the  theory  of  evolution  (Hke 
the  redemption  iu  theology,  it  serves  for  the  majority  as 
a  popular  expression  of  the  whole  new  creed)  can  justify 
people  in  their  unrighteousness,  and  it  seems  that  the 
scientific  theory  has  to  do  with  facts  only,  and  does 
nothing  but  observe  facts. 

But  that  only  seems  so.  Even  so  it  seemed  in  the 
case  of  the  theological  doctrine  that  the  theology  busied 
itself  only  with  dogmas  and  had  no  relation  to  the  life  of 
men :  even  so  it  seemed  in  philosophy :  it  seemed  to  be 
occupied  only  with  its  transcendental  ratiocinations. 

But  that  only  seemed  so.  Even  so  it  seemed  in  the 
case  of  the  Hegelian  doctrine  on  a  large  scale,  and  in 
particular  in  the  case  of  the  Malthusian  theory. 

Hegelianism  seemed  to  be  occupied  only  with  its  log- 
ical constructions  and  to  have  no  relation  to  the  life  of 
men  ;  the  same  seemed  to  be  the  case  with  the  Malthusian 


228  WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN  ? 

theory :  it  seemed  to  be  occupied  only  with  the  facts  of 
statistical  data.     But  that  only  seems  so. 

Modern  science  investigates  facts.  But  what  facts  ? 
Why  such  facts,  and  no  others  ? 

The  men  of  modern  science  are  very  fond  of  saying 
with  solemnity  and  conviction :  "  We  investigate  noth- 
ing but  facts,"  imagining  that  these  words  have  some 
meaning. 

It  is  impossible  to  investigate  nothing  but  facts,  be- 
cause of  the  facts  which  are  subject  to  our  investigation 
there  is  an  infinite  number  (in  the  exact  sense  of  the 
word).  Before  investigating  facts  it  is  necessary  to  have 
a  theory,  on  the  basis  of  which  such  or  such  facts  are 
chosen  out  of  the  endless  number.  And  this  theory 
exists,  and  is  even  very  definitely  expressed,  though 
many  of  the  men  of  modern  science  either  ignore  it,  that 
is,  do  not  want  to  know,  or  indeed  do  not  know  it,  or 
pretend  that  they  do  not  know  it.  Even  so  it  has  always 
been  with  all  the  reigning,  guiding  creeds,  —  with  theology 
and  with  philosophy. 

The  foundations  of  every  creed  are  always  given  in 
the  theory,  and  the  so-called  learned  men  only  invent  the 
further  deductions  from  the  original  data,  sometimes  with- 
out knowing  them.  But  there  is  always  a  fundamental 
theory.  Even  so  modern  science  now  chooses  its  facts 
on  the  basis  of  a  very  definite  theory,  which  at  times  it 
knows,  at  times  does  not  want  to  know,  at  times  indeed 
does  not  know ;  but  that  theory  exists. 

This  theory  is :  all  humanity  is  an  undying  organism, 
and  men  are  the  particles  of  the  organism,  each  of  whom 
has  his  special  calling  in  order  to  serve  the  whole. 

Just- as  the  cells,  composing  the  organism,  divide  the 
labour  among  themselves  for  the  struggle  for  existence  of 
the  whole  organism,  strengthen  one  quality  and  weaken 
another,  and  form  themselves  into  one  organ  in  order  the 
better  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  the  whole  organism,  and  just 


WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN?  229 

as  with  the  social  animals,  with  the  ants  and  bees,  the 
separate  individuals  divide  the  labour  among  themselves, — 
the  queen  laying  eggs,  the  drone  fertilizing  them,  the  bees 
working  for  the  life  of  the  whole,  —  even  so  in  humanity 
and  human  societies  takes  place  the  same  differentiation 
and  integration  of  the  parts. 

And  so,  in  order  to  find  the  law  of  man's  life,  it  is 
necessary  to  study  the  laws  of  life  and  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  organisms ;  in  the  life  and  evolution  of 
the  organisms  we  find  the  following  laws :  the  law 
that  every  phenomenon  is  accompanied  by  something 
more  than  the  immediate  consequences ;  another  law 
about  the  instability  of  the  homogeneous ;  and  a  third 
law  about  heterogeneity  and  homogeneity,  and  so  forth. 
All  this  seems  very  innocent,  but  it  is  enough  to  make 
the  deductions  from  all  these  investigations  of  facts  in 
order  to  see  at  once  whither  these  facts  teud.  All  these 
facts  teud  to  one  thing,  namely,  to  recognizing  humanity 
or  human  society  as  an  organism,  and  so  to  recognizing 
the  division  of  activities  which  exists  in  human  societies 
as  organic,  that  is,  as  necessary  ;  and  since  in  human 
societies  there  are  manifested  very  many  cruelties  and 
abominations,  these  phenomena  are  not  to  be  regarded  as 
cruel  and  abominable,  but  to  be  viewed  as  undoubted 
facts,  which  confirm  the  general  law,  namely,  the  law  of 
the  division  of  labour. 

The  philosophy  of  the  spirit  also  justified  every  cruelty 
and  abomination ;  there  it  was  philosophical,  and  so  — 
irregular ;  but  according  to  science  it  all  turns  out  to  be 
scientific,  and  so  —  unquestionable. 

How  can  one  help  accepting  such  a  beautiful  theory  ! 
It  is  enough  for  me  to  view  human  society  as  an  object 
of  observation,  in  order  calmly  to  devour  the  labours  of 
others  who  are"  perishing,  consoling  myself  with  the 
thought  that  my  activity  as  a  dancer,  lawyer,  doctor, 
philosopher,  actor,  investigator  of  mediumism  and  of  the 


230  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

form  of  atoms  is  a  functional  activity  of  the  organism  of 
humanity,  and  so  there  cannot  even  be  a  question  as 
to  the  justice  of  my  exploiting  the  labours  of  others,  —  I 
am  only  doing  what  is  pleasant  for  me,  —  as  there  can  be 
no  question  as  to  the  justice  of  the  activity  of  the  brain 
cell  which  is  making  use  of  the  muscular  labour. 

We  cannot  help  but  admit  such  a  practical  theory,  in 
order  that  we  may  for  ever  hide  our  conscience  in  our 
pocket,  and  live  a  completely  unbridled  animal  life,  feeling 
under  our  feet  the  imperturbable  support  of  our  modern 
science.  It  is  on  this  new  creed  that  the  justification  of 
the  idleness  and  the  cruelty  of  men  is  now  based. 


XXX. 

This  creed  began  but  recently,  some  fifty  years  ago. 
Its  chief  founder,  the  French  savant  Comte,  a  system- 
atizer  and  at  the  same  time  a  religious  man,  was,  under 
the  influence  of  the  then  new  physiological  investigations 
of  Bichat,  struck  by  an  old  idea,  which  had  been  expressed 
long  ago  by  Menenius  Agrippa,  that  human  societies,  even 
all  humanity,  might  be  considered  as  one  whole,  as  an 
organism,  and  men  as  the  living  particles  of  separate 
organs,  each  of  which  had  its  definite  purpose  to  serve  the 
whole  organism.  Comte  took  such  a  liking  to  this  idea 
that  lie  began  upon  it  to  construct  a  philosophic  theory, 
and  this  theory  so  carried  him  away  that  he  entirely  for- 
got that  his  point  of  departure  was  nothing  more  than  a 
pretty  comparison,  which  is  proper  in  a  fable,  but  in  no 
way  can  serve  as  a  foundation  for  science.  As  often  hap- 
pens, he  accepted  his  favourite  assumption  as  an  axiom, 
and  imagined  that  his  whole  theory,  was  based  on  the 
firmest  and  most  experimental  foundations.  According 
to  his  theory  it  turned  out  that,  since  humanity  is  an 
organism,  the  knowledge  of  what  a  man  is,  and  what  his 
relation  to  the  world  ought  to  be,  is  possible  only  through 
the  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  this  organism.  In 
order  to  discover  these  properties,  man  is  able  to  make 
observations  on  other,  lower  organisms,  and  from  their 
life  to  make  his  inferences. 

And  so,  in  the  first  place,  the  only  true  method  of 
science,  according  to  Comte,  is  the  inductive,  and  all 
science  is  only  that  which  has  experiment  for  its  founda- 
tion ;  in  the  second,  the  aim  and  apex  of  science  now  is 

231 


232  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

the  new  science  of  the  imaginary  organism  of  humanity, 
or  of  the  superorganic  being,  humanity :  this  new  imag- 
inary science  is  sociology.  From  this  view  of  science  in 
general  it  appeared  that  all  former  knowledge  had  been 
false,  and  all  history  of  humanity  in  the  sense  of  its  self- 
knowledge  was  divided  into  three,  or  really  two,  periods, 

(1)  the  theological  and  the  metaphysical  period,  which 
lasted  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  until  Comte,  and 

(2)  the  present  period  of  the  one,  true  science,  the  positive, 
which  began  with  Comte. 

All  that  was  very  nice  ;  there  was  but  one  mistake 
here,  namely,  this,  that  the  whole  building  was  reared  on 
the  sand,  on  the  arbitrary  assertion  that  humanity  is 
an  organism. 

This  assertion  was  arbitrary,  because  we  have  just  as 
little  right  to  acknowledge  the  existence  of  an  organism 
of  humanity,  wliich  is  not  subject  to  observation,  as  to 
assume  the  existence  of  a  triune  God  and  similar  theo- 
logical propositions. 

This  assertion  was  irregular,  because  to  the  concept  of 
humanity,  that  is,  of  men,  there  was  irregularly  added 
the  definition  of  an  organism,  whereas  humanity  lacks  the 
essential  sign  of  an  organism,  a  centre  of  sensation  and  of 
consciousness.  We_  call  an  elephant  or  a  bacterion  an 
organism,  only  because  from  analogy  we  assume  in  these 
beings  the  same  unification  of  sensation  and  of  conscious- 
ness which  we  know  in  ourselves ;  but  in  human  societies 
and  in  humanity  this  essential  sign  is  absent,  and  so,  no 
matter  how  many  other  common  signs  ,we  may  find  in 
humanity  and  in  the  organism,  without  this  essential  sign 
the  acknowledgment  of  humanity  as  an  organism  is 
irregular. 

But  in  spite  of  the  arbitrariness  and  irregularity  of  the 
fundamental  proposition  of  positive  philosophy,  it  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  so-called  cultured  world  with  the  greatest 
sympathy,  on  account  of  its  justification  of  the  existing 


"WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  233 

order  of  things,  so  important  for  the  crowd,  by  acknowl- 
edging the  legality  of  the  existing  violence  in  humanity. 
What  is  remarkable  in  this  respect  is  this,  that  of  Comte's 
works,  which  consist  of  two  parts,  of  positive  philosophy 
and  of  positive  politics,  the  learned  world  accepted  the 
first  only,  the  one  which  justified  on  the  new  experimen- 
tal principles  the  existing  evil  of  human  societies  ;  but  the 
second  part,  which  dealt  with  the  moral  obligations  of 
altruism  which  resulted  from  acknowledging  humanity  as 
an  organism,  was  considered  not  only  unimportant,  but 
even  insignificant  and  unscientific. 

The  same  was  repeated  as  with  the  two  parts  of  Kant's 
teaching.  The  critique  of  sound  reason  was  accepted 
by  the  learned  crowd  ;  but  the  critique  of  practical  reason, 
the  part  which  contains  the  essence  of  the  moral  teaching, 
was  rejected.  In  Comte's  teaching  they  recognized  as 
scientific  what  pandered  to  the  reigning  evil.  But  even 
the  positive  philosophy  which  the  crowd  accepted,  being 
based  on  an  arbitrary  and  irregular  proposition,  was  in 
itself  too  groundless  and  therefore  unstable,  and  so  was 
unable  to  hold  itself  for  any  length  of  time. 

Suddenly,  among  the  many  idle  speculations  of  the 
men  of  'the  so-called  science,  there  appears  again  a  new, 
and  just  as  arbitrary  and  irregular  an  assertion  that  living 
beings,  that  is,  organisms,  have  been  derived  one  from  the 
other,  —  not  only  one  organism  from  another,  but  one 
organism  from  many,  that  is,  that  in  a  very  long  interval 
of  time,  in  a  million  years,  a  fish  and  a  duck,  for  example, 
may  have  not  only  been  derived  from  one  and  the  same 
ancestor,  but  that  also  one  organism  may  have  been  de- 
rived from  many  separate  organisms,  so  that,  for  example, 
a  whole  swarm  of  bees  may  produce  one  animal.  This 
arbitrary  and  incorrect  assertion  was  accepted  by  the 
learned  world  with  still  greater  sympathy.  This  assertion 
was  arbitrary,  because  no  one  has  ever  seen  how  one  or- 
ganism is  produced  from  others,  and  so  the  assumption 


234  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

about  the  origin  of  species  will  always  remain  an  assump- 
tion, and  not  an  experimental  fact.  And  this  assumption 
was  incorrect,  because  the  solution  of  the  question  about 
the  origin  of  species  by  saying  that  they  originated  in 
consequence  of  the  law  of  heredity  and  adaptation  during 
an  infinitely  long  period  of  time,  is  not  at  all  a  solution, 
but  only  a  repetition  of  the  question  in  a  new  form. 

According  to  the  solution  of  the  question  by  Moses 
(the  whole  significance  of  the  theory  consists  in  a  polemic 
with  him)  it  turns  out  that  the  diversity  of  the  species  of 
living  beings  is  due  to  God's  will  and  infinite  power ;  but 
according  to  the  theory  of  evolution  it  turns  out  that  the 
diversity  of  the  living  beings  originated  from  itself  in 
consequence  of  infinitely  diversified  conditions  of  heredity 
and  surroundings  in  an  infinite  period  of  time.  The 
theory  of  evolution,  speaking  in  simple  language,  asserts 
only  that  in  an  infinite  period  of  time  anything  you  please 
may  originate  from  anything  you  please. 

There  is  no  answer  to  the  question,  but  the  same  ques- 
tion is  differently  put :  instead  of  the  will,  accident  is 
put,  and  the  coefficient  of  the  infinite  is  transferred  from 
power  to  time.  But  this  new  assertion,  intensified  by 
Darwin's  followers  in  the  sense  of  arbitrariness  and  incor- 
rectness, strengthened  the  former  assertion  of  Comte,  and 
so  it  became  the  revelation  of  our  time  and  the  foundation 
of  all  the  sciences,  even  of  history,  philology,  and  religion, 
and,  besides,  according  to  the  naive  confession  of  the 
founder  of  the  theory  liimself,  of  Darwin,  his  idea  was 
called  forth  by  Malthus's  law  and  so  advanced  the  theory 
of  the  struggle  of  the  living  beings  and  of  men  for  exist- 
ence as  the  fundamental  law  of  everything  living.  But 
that  was  all  the  crowd  of  idle  people  needed  for  their 
justification. 

Two  unstable  theories,  which  could  not  stand  on  their 
legs,  supported  one  another  and  assumed  a  semblance  of 
stability.      Both  theories  bore  in  themselves  a  meaning 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  235 

which  was  precious  to  the  crowd,  namely,  that  men  are 
not  to  blame  for  the  existing  evil  of  human  societies,  but 
that  the  existing  order  is  precisely  what  it  ought  to  be ; 
and  the  new  theory  was  accepted  by  the  crowd  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  was  needed,  with  full  faith  and  unheard 
of  enthusiasm.  And  on  these  two  arbitrary  and  incorrect 
propositions,  which  were  accepted  as  dogmas  of  faith,  the 
new  scientific  creed  was  firmly  grounded. 

In  subject  and  in  form  this  new  creed  has  an  unusual 
resemblance  to  the  Christian  creed  of  the  church. 

In  subject  this  resemblance  consists  in  this,  that  in 
either  an  unreal,  fantastic  meaning  is  ascribed  to  reality, 
and  this  unreal  meaning  is  made  a  subject  for  investiga- 
tion. 

In  the  church  -  Christian  creed  the  real  Christ  has 
assumed  the  fantastic  meaning  of  God  himself ;  in  the 
positive  creed  the  fantastic  meaning  of  an  organism  is 
ascribed  to  an  actual  being,  —  to  living  men. 

In  form  the  resemblance  of  the  two  creeds  is  striking 
in  this,  that  in  either  a  certain  comprehension  of  one  set 
of  men  is  acknowledged  to  be  the  one  infallibly  correct 
and  true  comprehension. 

In  the  Christianity  of  the  church  the  comprehension  of 
divine  revelation  by  the  people  who  called  themselves  the 
church  is  recognized  as  sacred  and  exclusively  true ;  ac- 
cording to  the  positive  creed  the  comprehension  of  science 
by  the  men  who  call  themselves  scientific  is  recognized  as 
unquestionable  and  true.  Just  as  the  Christians  of  the 
church  recognized  the  beginning  of  the  true  knowledge  of 
God  only  from  the  foundation  of  their  church,  and  only, 
as  it  were,  out  of  civihty,  said  that  the  former  believers 
were  also  the  church  ;  even  so  the  positive  science,  accord- 
ing to  its  assertion,  began  only  with  Comte,  and  the  men 
of  science,  again  only  out  of  civility,  admit  the  existence  of 
science  before  their  day,  but  only  in  the  person  of  some 
of  its  representatives,  such  as  Aristotle ;  just  like  the  church, 


236  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

SO  the  positive  science  completely  excludes  the  knowledge 
of  all  the  rest  of  humanity,  recognizing  all  such  knowl- 
edge as  erroneous. 

The  resemblance  goes  even  farther :  just  as  to  the 
aid  of  the  fundamental  dogma  of  theology,  of  the  divinity 
of  Christ  and  of  the  trinity,  there  comes  the  old  dogma  of 
man's  fall  and  of  his  redemption  through  Christ's  death, 
which  receives  a  new  meaning,  and  of  these  two  dogmas 
the  popular  ecclesiastic  doctrine  is  composed,  —  so  in  our 
time,  to  the  aid  of  Comte's  fundamental  dogma  about  the 
organism  of  humanity  comes  the  old  dogma  of  evolution, 
which  receives  a  new  meaning,  and  from  both  the  popular 
scientific  creed  is  composed. 

In  either  creed  the  new  dogma  is  necessary  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  old  one,  and  is  comprehensible  only  in  connec- 
tion with  the  fundamental  dogma.  If  to  the  believer  in 
Christ's  divinity  it  is  not  clear  and  not  comprehensible 
why  God  came  down  upon  earth,  the  dogma  of  redemption 
gives  this  explanation. 

If  to  the  believer  in  the  organism  of  humanity  it  is  not 
clear  why  an  aggregate  of  individuals  may  be  considered 
an  organism,  the  dogma  of  evolution  furnishes  this  expla- 
nation. 

The  dogma  of  redemption  is  necessary  in  order  to 
harmonize  the  contradiction  with  the  actuality  of  the 
first  dogma. 

God  came  down  upon  earth  in  order  to  save  men,  and 
men  are  not  saved,  —  how  is  this  contradiction  to  be 
harmonized  ?  The  dogma  of  redemption  says :  "  If  you 
believe  in  the  redemption,  you  are  saved." 

Similarly  the  dogma  of  evolution  is  necessary  in  order 
to  solve  the  contradiction  with  the  actuality  of  the  first 
dogma :  humanity  is  an  organism,  and  yet  we  see  that  it 
does  not  answer  the  first  sign  of  an  organism,  —  how  is 
this  to  l^e  harmonized  ?  And  so  the  dogma  of  evolution 
says :     "  Humanity    is    an    organism    in    formation.       If 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  237 

you  believe  in  this,  you  can  view  humanity  as  an 
organism." 

And  just  as  for  a  man  who  is  free  from  the  supersti- 
tion of  the  trinity  and  the  divinity  of  Christ  it  is  even 
impossible  to  comprehend  wherein  the  interest  and  mean- 
ing of  the  doctrine  of  redemption  lies,  and  this  meaning 
is  explained  only  by  acknowledging  the  fundamental 
dogma  about  Christ  being  God  himself,  —  even  so  for 
humanity,  which  is  free  from  the  positive  superstition,  it 
is  even  impossible  to  comprehend  in  what  lies  the  interest 
of  the  teaching  about  the  origin  of  species  of  evolution, 
and  this  interest  is  explained  only  when  one  knows  the 
fundamental  dogma  about  humanity  being  an  organism. 

And  just  as  all  the  finesses  of  theology  are  compre- 
hensible to  him  only  who  believes  in  the  fundamental 
dogmas,  even  so  all  the  finesses  of  sociology,  which  now 
occupy  all  the  minds  of  the  men  of  the  very  latest  and 
profoundest  science,  are  comprehensible  to  the  believer 
only. 

The  resemblance  of  the  two  creeds  consists  further  in 
this,  that  the  propositions  once  accepted  on  faith  and  no 
longer  subject  to  investigation  serve  as  a  foundation 
for  the  strangest  of  theories,  and  the  preachers  of  these 
theories,  having  appropriated  to  themselves  the  method 
of  asserting  their  right  to  recognize  themselves  as  holy  in 
theology  and  as  scientific  in  knowledge,  that  is,  infallible, 
reach  the  most  arbitrary,  incredible,  and  groundless 
assertions,  which  they  express  ^vith  the  gi-eatest  solemnity 
and  seriousness,  and  which  with  the  same  seriousness  and 
solemnity  are  disputed  in  detail  by  those  who  do  not 
agree  on  particular  points,  but  equally  recognize  the 
fundamental  dogmas. 

The  Basil  the  Great  of  this  creed,  Spencer,  for  example, 
in  one  of  his  first  writings  expresses  these  creeds  as  fol- 
lows :  societies  and  organisms,  he  says,  differ  in  this : 

(1)  That,  beginning  as  small  aggregates,  they  imper- 


238  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

ceptibly  grow  in  mass,  so  that  some  of  them  reach  a  size 
which  is  ten  thousand  times  as  large  as  the  original. 

(2)  That,  while  in  the  beginning  they  are  of  such  a 
simple  structure  that  they  may  be  regarded  as  deprived 
of  all  structure,  they  during  the  time  of  their  growth 
acquire  a  constantly  increasing  complexity  of  structure. 

(3)  That,  although  in  their  early,  undeveloped  period 
there  exists  between  them  hardly  any  mutual  relation 
of  the  particles  between  themselves,  this  relation  finally 
becomes  so  powerful  that  the  activity  and  the  hfe  of  each 
particle  becomes  possible  only  with  the  activity  and  the 
life  of  the  rest. 

(4)  That  the  life  and  the  development  of  society  are 
independent  and  more  prolonged  than  the  life  and  the 
development  of  any  of  its  component  units,  which  are 
born,  grow,  act,  reproduce,  and  die  separately,  while  the 
body  politic,  which  is  composed  of  them,  continues  to  live 
generation  after  generation,  developing  in  the  mass,  on  ac- 
count of  the  perfection  of  the  structure  and  the  functional 
activity. 

After  that  follow  the  points  of  difference  between 
organisms  and  society,  and  it  is  proved  that  these  dif- 
ferences are  only  seeming  ones,  and  that  organisms  and 
societies  are  completely  alike. 

To  a  fresh  man  there  presents  itself  the  direct  question  : 
"What  are  you  talking  about?  Why  is  humanity  an 
organism  ?  or  why  does  it  resemble  it  ? 

"  You  say  that  societies  according  to  these  four  signs 
are  like  organisms,  but  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  You 
only  take  a  few  of  the  signs  of  tlie  organism,  and  classify 
human  societies  according  to  them. 

"  You  adduce  four  signs  of  resemblance,  then  take  the 
signs  of  difference,  but  only  the  seeming  ones  (as  it  appears 
to  us),  and  you  conclude  that  human  societies  may  be 
viewed  as  organisms.  But  this  is  an  idle  play  of  dialec- 
tics and  nothing  else.     On  such  a  foundation  it  is  possible 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  239 

to  classify  anything  you  please  according  to  the  signs  of 
the  organism." 

I  shall  take  the  first  thing  that  occurs  to  me,  let  us  say 
uhe  forest,  as  it  is  sowed  in  the  field  and  grows  up : 

(1)  Beginning  as  a  small  aggregate,  etc. ;  precisely  the 
same  takes  place  in  the  fields,  when  the  seeds  slowly  take 
root  in  them,  and  the  forest  grows  up. 

(2)  In  the  beginning  the  structure  is  simple,  then  the 
complexity  grows,  etc. ;  precisely  the  same  is  true  of 
the  forest :  first  there  are  nothing  but  little  birches,  then 
willov/s  and  hazel  bushes  are  added ;  at  first  they  grow 
straight,  and  later  their  branches  intertwine. 

(3)  The  interrelation  of  the  particles  increases  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  life  of  each  particle  depends  on  the 
life  and  the  activity  of  the  rest ;  precisely  the  same  is  true 
of  the  forest :  the  hazel  bushes  warm  the  trunks  (cut  them 
out,  and  the  other  trees  will  freeze),  the  border  under- 
brush guards  it  against  the  wind,  the  seed  trees  continue 
ilie  species,  the  tall  and  leafy  trees  furnish  shade,  and  the 
life  of  one  tree  depends  on  the  other. 

(4)  The  separate  parts  may  die,  but  the  whole  lives ; 
the  same  is  true  of  the  forest :  as  the  proverb  says,  The 
forest  does  not  lament  a  tree. 

Precisely  the  same  is  true  with  the  example  generally 
adduced  by  the  advocates  of  the  theory,  that  if  the  arm  is 
chopped  off,  the  arm  will  die ;  plant  a  tree  beyond  the 
shade  and  the  forest  soil,  and  it  will  die. 

There  is  also  a  remarkable  resemblance  between  this 
creed  and  the  Christian  dogma  of  the  church  and  any 
other  which  is  based  on  dogmas  that  are  taken  upon 
faith,  on  account  of  its  impermeability  against  the  proofs 
of  logic.  Having  shown  that  the  forest  may,  according  to 
this  theory,  with  equal  right  be  considered  an  organism, 
you  think  that  you  have  proven  to  them  the  incorrectness 
of  their  definition,  —  but  that  is  where  you  are  mistaken. 

The  definition  which  they  give  to  the  organism  is  so 


240  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

inexact  and  so  extensible  that  they  can  classify  under 
their  definition  anything  they  please. 

"  Yes,"  they  will  say,  "  a  forest  may  be  regarded  as  an 
organism.  A  forest  is  a  peaceful  interaction  of  individuals 
which  do  not  destroy  one  another,  —  an  aggregate,  — 
and  its  parts  may  also  come  into  a  closer  union  and,  like 
a  bee  swarm,  may  become  an  organism." 

Then  you  will  say  that  if  it  is  so,  the  birds,  and  the 
insects,  and  the  grasses  of  this  forest,  which  interact  and 
do  not  destroy  one  another,  may  also  be  viewed  with  the 
trees  as  one  organism. 

They  will  agree  even  to  that.  Every  aggregate  of  liv- 
ing beings  which  interact  and  do  not  destroy  one  another 
may,  according  to  their  theory,  also  be  viewed  as  an 
organism.  You  may  assume  a  union  and  cooperation 
between  any  things  you  please,  and  from  evolution  you 
may  affirm  that  out  of  anything  you  please  there  will  in 
a  very  long  time  be  produced  anything  you  please. 

It  is  impossible  to  prove  to  those  who  believe  in  the 
trinity  of  God  that  that  is  not  so,  but  it  is  possible  to 
show  them  that  their  assertion  is  an  assertior  not  of 
knowledge,  but  of  faith,  and  that  if  they  assert  that  there 
are  three  Gods,  I  with  the  same  right  may  assert  that 
there  are  seventeen  and  a  half  of  them ;  the  same,  with 
even  greater  assurance,  may  be  proved  to  the  followers 
of  the  positive  and  evolutionary  science.  On  the  basis 
of  this  science  I  will  undertake  to  prove  anything  you 
please.  And  what  is  most  remarkable  is  this,  that  this 
same  positive  science  recognizes  the  scientific  method  as  a 
sign  of  true  knowledge,  and  has  itself  defined  what  it 
calls  a  scientific  method.  What  it  calls  the  scientific 
method  is  common  sense,  and  it  is  this  common  sense 
which  accuses  it  at  every  step. 

The  moment  those  who  occupied  the  places  of  the 
saints  began  to  feel  that  there  was  nothing  saintly  left  in 
them,  and  that  they  were  all  cursed,  hke  the  Pope  and 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  241 

our  Synod,  they  immediately  called  themselves,  not  only 
holy,  but  also  most  holy.  The  moment  science  felt  that 
there  was  nothing  of  common  sense  left  in  it,  it  called 
itself  the  science  of  common  sense,  that  is,  scientific 
science. 


XXXI. 

The  division  of  labour  is  the  law  of  everything  in  exist- 
ence, and  so  it  must  be  also  in  human  societies.  It  is 
very  likely  that  it  is  so,  but  the  question  still  remains 
whether  the  division  of  labour  which  is  uow  in  human 
societies  is  that  division  of  labour  which  there  ought  to 
be.  And  if  people  consider  a  certain  division  of  labour 
irrational  and  unjust,  no  science  can  prove  to  people  that 
that  which  they  regard  as  irrational  and  unjust  ought  to 
exist. 

The  theological  theory  has  proved  that  the  power  is 
from  God,  and  it  is  very  likely  that  it  is,  but  the  question 
is  still  left :  whose  power  is  from  God,  Catherine's  or 
Pugach^v's  ?  And  no  finesses  of  theology  have  been  able 
to  solve  this  doubt. 

The  philosophy  of  the  Spirit  has  proved  that  the  state 
is  a  form  of  the  evolution  of  individuals ;  but  the  question 
was  still  left :  can  the  state  of  a  Nero  or  of  a  Dzhingis- 
khan  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  the  evolution  of  individu- 
als ?  And  no  transcendental  words  have  been  able  to 
solve  this. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  scientific  science. 

The  division  of  labour  is  a  condition  of  the  life  of 
organisms  and  of  human  societies ;  but  what  is  it  in  these 
human  societies  that  must  be  regarded  as  an  organic 
division  of  labour  ?  And  no  matter  how  much  science 
may  study  the  division  of  labour  in  tlie  cells  of  rain- 
worms, all  these  observations  will  not  make  a  man  regard 
as  correct  a  division  of  labour  which  is  not  recognized  as 
such  by  his  reason  and  his  conscience. 

No  matter  how  convincing  the  proofs  may  be  in  the 

242 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  243 

case  of  the  division  of  labour  of  the  cells  iu  organisms 
under  observation,  a  man,  if  he  is  not  yet  deprived  of  rea- 
son, will  none  the  less  say  that  it  is  uot  right  for  a  man 
to  be  weaving  cottons  all  his  life,  and  that  this  is  not  a 
division  of  labour,  but  an  oppression  of  men. 

Spencer  and  the  rest  say  that  there  are  whole  settle- 
ments of  weavers,  and  that,  therefore,  the  weavers'  activ- 
ity is  an  organic  division  of  labour,  —  but  saying  this, 
they  say  precisely  what  the  theologians  have  said. 

There  is  a  power,  and  so  it  is  from  God,  no  matter 
what  it  may  be.  There  are  weavers,  consequently  such 
is  the  division  of  labour.  It  would  be  well  to  say  so,  if 
the  power  and  the  population  of  the  weavers  were  made 
by  themselves,  but  we  know  that  they  are  not  made  by 
themselves,  but  by  us.  And  so  we  have  to  find  out 
whether  we  made  this  power  by  God's  will  or  by  our 
own,  and  whether  we  made  these  weavers  according  to 
an  organic  law  or  according  to  something  else. 

People  live  and  support  themselves  by  agriculture  as  is 
proper  for  all  men  :  a  man  puts  up  a  blacksmith's  forge 
and  mends  his  plough,  and  his  neighbour  comes  and  asks 
him  to  mend  his,  and  promises  labour  or  money  for  it.  A 
third,  a  fourth  come,  and  in  the  society  of  these  men  the 
following  division  of  labour  takes  place :  a  blacksmith  is 
created.  Another  man  teaches  his  children  well,  and  his 
neighbour  brings  his  children  to  him,  and  asks  him  to 
teach  them,  —  and  a  teacher  is  created.  But  the  smith 
and  the  teacher  became  and  still  are  such  because  they 
were  asked,  and  they  remain  such  only  so  long  as  they 
are  asked  to  be  a  smith  or  a  teacher.  If  it  should  happen 
that  there  should  be  many  smiths  and  teachers,  or  that 
their  labour  is  not  wanted,  they  would,  as  common  sense 
demands,  and  as  always  happens  where  there  are  no 
causes  for  violating  the  regularity  of  the  division  of 
labour,  at  once  give  up  their  professions  and  return  to 
agriculture. 


244       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ? 

People  who  act  in  this  manner  are  guided  by  their  rea- 
son and  their  conscience,  and  so  we,  the  men  who  are 
endowed  with  reason  and  conscience,  assert  that  such  a 
division  of  labour  is  regular.  But  if  it  should  happen 
that  the  smiths  could  compel  others  to  work  for  them,  and 
should  continue  to  make  horseshoes,  when  they  were  not 
needed,  and  the  teachers  should  teach  when  there  was  no 
one  to  teach,  every  fresh  man,  as  a  man,  that  is,  as  a 
being  endowed  with  reason  and  with  conscience,  would 
plainly  see  that  that  would  not  be  a  division,  but  a 
seizure  of  somebody  else's  labour,  because  such  an  activ- 
ity would  depart  from  that  one  measure  by  which  we  can 
tell  the  regularity  of  the  division  of  labour :  the  demand 
for  this  labour  by  other  men,  and  a  freely  offered  remu- 
neration for  this  labour.  And  yet  just  such  activity  is 
what  according  to  the  scientific  science  is  called  division 
of  labour. 

People  do  what  others  do  not  even  think  of  demanding, 
and  demand  to  be  fed  for  it,  saying  that  this  is  just,  be- 
cause it  is  a  division  of  labour. 

What  forms  the  chief  public  calamity  of  the  masses,  — 
not  in  our  country  alone,  —  is  the  government,  the  num- 
berless officials  ;  what  forms  the  cause  of  the  economic 
wretchedness  of  our  time  is  what  the  English  call  over- 
production (the  manufacturing  of  a  mass  of  articles  which 
cannot  be  got  rid  of,  and  which  nobody  wants) :  all  this 
comes  from  the  strange  comprehension  of  the  division  of 
labour. 

It  would  be  strange  to  see  a  shoemaker,  who  thought 
that  people  were  obliged  to  support  him,  because  he 
never  stopped  making  boots,  which  people  have  long 
stopped  wanting ;  but  what  is  to  be  said  of  those  men  of 
the  government,  the  church,  science,  the  arts,  who  do  not 
make  boots,  who  do  not  produce  anything  tangible  or 
useful  for  the  people,  for  whose  commodities  there  is  no 
demand,  and  who,  on  the  basis  of  the  division  of  labour, 


WHAT    SUALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  245 

demand  just  as  boldly  that  they  should  be  given  palatable 
food  and  drink,  and  be  comfortably  clothed  ? 

There  may  be,  and  there  are,  wizards  for  whose  activity 
there  is  a  demand,  and  to  whom  people  carry  for  this 
pancakes  and  half-stoups ;  but  it  is  hard  to  imagine  that 
there  should  be  wizards  whose  witchery  is  not  wanted, 
and  who  none  the  less  demand  boldly  to  be  given  good 
food,  because  they  would  practise  their  magical  art. 

And  yet  it  is  this  that  happens  in  our  world  with  the 
people  of  the  government,  the  church,  science,  and  art. 

And  all  this  takes  place  on  the  basis  of  that  false 
comprehension  of  the  division  of  labour,  which  is  not 
determined  by  one's  conscience,  but  by  observation,  which 
with  such  unanimity  is  professed  by  the  men  of  science. 

The  division  of  labour  has  indeed  existed  at  all  times, 
but  it  is  regular  only  when  man  decides  by  his  reason  and 
his  conscience  what  it  is  to  be,  and  not  when  he  shall 
observe  it ;  but  the  conscience  and  the  reason  of  all  men 
decide  this  question  in  a  very  simple,  unquestionable,  and 
unanimous  manner. 

They  decided  that  the  division  of  labour  is  regular  only 
when  the  special  activity  of  a  man  is  so  necessary  to  men 
that  they,  asking  him  to  serve  them,  themselves  offer  to 
support  him  for  what  he  will  do  for  them.  But  when 
a  man  can  from  childhood  to  his  thirtieth  year  sit  on  the 
neck  of  others,  promising,  after  he  has  learned  it,  to  do 
something  useful,  which  nobody  asks  him  to  do,  and  when 
he  later,  from  his  thirtieth  year  until  his  death,  can  pro- 
ceed living  in  the  same  way,  all  the  time  with  only  the 
promise  to  do  something  which  nobody  asks  him  to  do, 
that  will  not  be  any  division  of  labour  (as,  indeed  it  does 
not  exist  in  our  society),  but,  what  it  really  is,  only  a 
seizure  by  the  strong  of  the  labour  of  others ;  it  is  the 
same  seizure  of  other  men's  labour  by  the  strong  which 
formerly  the  theologians  used  to  call  divine  destination, 
and  the  philosophers  later  called  necessary  forms  of  hfe, 


246  WHAT    SHRILL    WE    DO    THEN? 

and  now  the  scientific  science  calls  organic  division  of 
labour. 

The  whole  significance  of  the  reigning  science  is  only 
in  this. 

It  has  now  become  a  distributer  of  diplomas  for 
idleness,  because  it  alone  analyzes  and  decides  in  its 
sanctuaries  which  is  a  parasitical  and  wliich  an  organic 
activity  of  man  in  the  social  organism,  —  as  though  a 
man  could  not  find  out  this  same  thing  much  more  cor- 
rectly and  more  quickly  by  consulting  his  reason  and  his 
conscience. 

And  as  formerly  for  the  clergy  and  later  for  the  men 
of  the  State  there  could  have  been  no  doubt  as  to  who 
were  most  useful  to  others,  so  it  seems  now  to  the  scien- 
tific science  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  fact  that 
its  activity  is  unquestionably  organic :  they,  the  scientific 
and  the  artistic  actors,  are  the  most  precious  brain  cells 
of  the  org'  nism.  But  God  be  with  them !  Let  them 
reign,  eat  and  drink  what  is  good,  and  live  idly,  as  lived 
and  reigned  the  priests  and  the  sophists,  if  only,  as  priests 
and  sophists,  they  did  not  corrupt  people. 

Ever  since  there  have  been  people,  rational  beings, 
they  have  distinguished  between  good  and  evil  and  have 
made  use  of  what  the  men  before  them  have  distinguished 
in  this  respect :  they  have  struggled  against  the  evil, 
sought  the  true  and  best  path,  and  slowly  but  unyieldingly 
advanced  on  this  path.  And  always,  barring  this  path, 
there  have  risen  before  men  all  kinds  of  deceptions  which 
have  for  their  aim  to  show  that  this  must  not  be  done, 
and  that  it  is  necessary  to  live  the  best  way  one  can. 
There  arose  the  terrible,  old  deceptions  of  tlie  ecclesiastics  ; 
with  a  terrible  struggle  and  labour  men  slowly  emanci- 
pated themselves  from  them,  but  before  they  managed  to 
free  themselves,  a  new  deception,  the  politico-philosoph- 
ical, took  the  place  of  the  old  ones.  Men  freed  them- 
selves even  from  this. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  247 

And  a  new,  a  still  worse,  deception  grew  out  on  the 
path  of  men,  —  the  scientific  deception. 

This  new  deception  is  just  like  the  older  ones  :  its 
essence  consists  in  substituting  something  external  for  the 
activity  of  our  reason  and  of  our  conscience  and  of  those 
who  have  lived  before  us:  in  the  church  teaching  this 
external  matter  was  revelation,  in  science  it  is  observation. 

The  trap  of  this  science  consists  in  this,  that,  pointing 
out  to  men  the  grossest  deviations  of  the  activity  of  men's 
reason  and  conscience,  it  destroys  in  them  their  faith 
in  reason  and  conscience,  and,  conceahng  its  deception, 
which  is  clothed  in  a  scientific  theory,  it  assures  them 
that  they,  studying  the  external  phenomena,  are  studying 
undoubted  facts,  such  as  will  reveal  to  them  the  law  of 
man's  hfe.  But  the  mental  demoralization  consists  in 
this,  that,  by  acquiring  the  belief  that  the  objects,  which 
in  reahty  are  subject  to  the  conscience  and  to  reason,  are 
subject  to  observation,  these  people  lose  the  consciousness 
of  good  and  evil  and  become  incapable  of  understanding 
those  expressions  and  definitions  of  good  and  evil  which 
have  been  worked  out  by  the  whole  preceding  hfe  of 
humanity.  All  this  in  their  jargon  is  conventional  and 
subjective.  All  this  has  to  be  abandoned,  they  say  ;  it  is 
impossible  through  reason  to  understand  the  tnith,  be- 
cause it  is  possible  to  err,  and  there  is  another  path  which 
is  faultless  and  almost  mechanical :  it  is  necessary  to 
study  facts.  But  facts  have  to  be  studied  on  the  basis  of 
scientific  science,  that  is,  of  two  groundless  propositions, 
—  of  positivism  and  of  evolution,  —  which  are  given  out 
as  most  unquestionable  truths. 

And  the  reigning  science  declares,  with  a  not  less  decep- 
tive solemnity  than  does  the  church,  that  the  solution  of 
all  the  questions  of  life  is  possible  only  through  the  study 
of  the  facts  of  Nature  and  especially  of  the  organisms. 

The  credulous  multitude  of  youths,  overcome  by  the 
novelty   of    this   authority,  which  is  not    only   not  yet 


248  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

destroyed,  but  even  not  yet  touched  by  criticism,  throws 
itself  with  avidity  on  the  study  of  these  facts  in  the 
natural  sciences,  on  that  only  path  which,  according  to 
the  assertion  of  the  reigning  doctrine,  can  lead  to  the 
elucidation  of  the  questions  of  life. 

But  the  farther  the  disciples  move  in  this  study,  the 
farther  and  farther  removed  from  them  becomes,  not  only 
the  possibility,  but  even  the  idea  itself  of  the  solution 
of  the  questions  of  life,  and  the  more  and  more  do  they 
become  accustomed,  not  so  much  to  observe,  as  to  take  on 
trust  the  observations  of  others  (to  believe  in  cells,  in  pro- 
toplasm, in  the  fourth  state  of  matter,  and  so  forth) ;  the 
more  and  more  does  the  form  shield  the  contents  from 
them ;  the  more  and  more  do  they  lose  the  consciousness 
of  good  and  evil  and  the  ability  to  understand  those  expres- 
sions and  definitions  of  good  and  evil  which  are  worked 
out  by  the  whole  preceding  life  of  humanity  ;  the  more 
and  more  do  they  acquire  a  special  scientific  jargon  of 
conventional  expressions,  which  has  no  universal  human 
significance  ;  the  more  and  more  do  they  enter  into  ravines 
of  unenlightened  observations  ;  the  more  and  more  are  they 
deprived  of  the  ability,  not  only  to  think  independently,  but 
even  to  understand  a  fresh,  human  thought  which  is  found 
outside  their  Talmud ;  and,  above  all  else,  they  pass  their 
best  years  in  becoming  dissociated  from  life,  that  is,  from 
labour,  get  accustomed  to  regard  their  condition  as  justi- 
fied, and  grow  even  physically  to  be  worthless  parasites. 
And  just  like  the  theologians  and  Talmudists,  they  com- 
pletely wrench  their  brains  and  become  eunuchs  of 
thought.  And  just  like  them,  in  proportion  with  their 
dulling,  they  acquire  a  self-confidence  which  deprives 
them  for  ever  of  the  possibility  of  a  return  to  the  simple, 
clear,  and  universally  human  manner  of  thinking. 


XXXII. 

The  division  of  labour  in  human  society  has  always 
existed  and,  no  doubt,  will  always  exist ;  but  for  us  the 
question  is  not  whether  it  is  and  will  be,  but  what  we 
must  be  guided  by,  in  order  that  the  division  may  be  regu- 
lar. Now  if  we  take  observation  as  a  standard,  we  shall 
in  this  manner  at  once  renounce  all  standards,  and  then 
every  division  of  labour  which  we  shall  see  among 
people,  and  which  will  appear  regular  to  us,  will  be  re- 
garded as  regular  by  us,  —  and  to  this  indeed  the  reigning 
scientific  science  leads  us. 

Division  of  labour !  Some  busy  themselves  with  men- 
tal, spiritual  labour,  others  with  muscular,  physical  labour. 
With  what  assurance  these  people  speak !  They  want  to 
believe  so,  and  it  seems  to  them  that  there  is  indeed  taking 
place  a  completely  regular  exchange  of  services,  where  in 
reality  it  is  only  a  very  simple  and  old  form  of  violence. 

"  Thou,  or  rather  you  "  (for  it  is  always  a  number  of 
people  who  feed  one),  "  feed  and  clothe  me  and  do  for  me 
all  the  coarse  labour  which  I  shall  demand,  and  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  receive  from  childhood,  and  I  will 
do  for  you  that  mental  labour  which  I  can  and  to  which 
I  am  accustomed.  You  give  me  the  physical  food,  and  I 
will  furnish  you  with  your  spiritual  pabulum."  (The  cal- 
culation seems  quite  correct,  and  it  would  be  quite  correct, 
if  this  exchange  of  services  were  voluntary,  if  those  who 
furnish  the  physical  food  were  not  compelled  to  furnish  it 
before  they  receive  the  spiritual  pabulum.) 

The  producer  of  the  spiritual  food  says :  "  In  order  that 

249 


250  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

I  may  be  able  to  give  you  the  spiritual  food,  feed  and 
clothe  me,  and  carry  out  my  impurities." 

The  producer  of  the  physical  food  is  compelled  to  do 
this,  without  uttering  any  demands,  and  has  to  give  the 
physical  food,  though  he  may  not  receive  any  spiritual 
food.  If  the  exchange  were  voluntary,  the  conditions  of 
the  two  would  be  the  same. 

"We  agree  to  this,  that  the  spiritual  food  is  as  necessary 
for  man  as  the  physical  food.  The  savant,  the  artist,  says  : 
"  Before  we  can  begin  to  serve  men  by  means  of  the  spir- 
itual food,  it  is  necessary  for  men  to  provision  us  with 
the  physical  food."  But  why  should  not  the  producer  of 
physical  food  say  that  before  he  is  to  serve  them  with 
the  physical  food  he  needs  the  spiritual  food,  and  that,  if 
he  does  not  receive  it,  he  is  unable  to  work  ? 

You  say :  "  I  need  the  work  of  the  ploughman,  smith, 
shoemaker,  carpenter,  mason,  privy  cleaner,  and  others  in 
order  that  I  may  be  able  to  prepare  my  spiritual  food." 
Every  labourer  ought  equally  to  say :  "  Before  I  go  out  to 
work  in  order  to  prepare  the  physical  food  for  you,  I  must 
possess  the  fruits  of  the  spiritual  food.  To  have  strength 
for  the  work  there  are  indispensable  to  me :  the  religious 
teaching,  the  order  in  the  social  life,  the  application  of 
knowledge  to  labour,  the  joys  and  the  consolations  which 
the  arts  give.  I  have  no  time  to  work  out  my  teaching 
about  the  meaning  of  life,  —  give  it  to  me.  I  have  no 
time  to  think  out  statutes  of  social  life,  such  that  justice 
would  not  be  impaired,  —  give  it  to  me.  I  have  no  time 
to  busy  myself  with  mechanics,  physics,  chemistry,  tech- 
nology, —  give  me  the  books  with  the  indications  of  how 
to  improve  my  tools,  my  methods  of  work,  my  dwelling, 
my  heating,  my  lighting.  I  have  no  time  to  busy  myself 
with  poetry,  plastic  art,  music,  —  give  me  the  necessary 
incitements  and  consolations  for  life ;  give  me  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  arts.  You  say  that  you  cannot  busy  your- 
self with  your  important  and  necessary  works,  if  you  shall 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  251 

be  deprived  of  the  labour  which  the  labouring  people  are 
bearing  for  you,  but  I  say,"  the  labourer  will  say,  "  that  I 
cannot  possibly  busy  myself  with  my  not  less  important 
and  necessary  labours,  —  ploughing,  hauling  manure,  and 
cleaning  up  your  impurities,  —  if  I  shall  be  deprived  of  the 
religious  guidance  and  of  what  corresponds  to  the  demands 
of  my  mind  and  conscience,  of  a  rational  government  which 
will  make  my  labour  secure,  of  the  indications  of  knowl- 
edge for  the  alleviation  of  my  work,  of  the  joy  of  art  for 
the  ennoblement  of  my  labour.  Everything  which  you 
heretofore  have  offered  me  in  the  form  of  spiritual  food  is 
not  only  of  no  use  to  me,  but  I  even  fail  to  understand 
to  whom  it  can  be  of  any  use.  And  so  long  as  I  do  not 
get  this  food,  which  is  proper  for  me,  as  it  is  for  any  man, 
I  cannot  feed  you  with  the  physical  food,  which  I  pro- 
duce.'' 

What  if  the  labourer  should  say  so  ? 

If  he  should,  it  would  not  be  a  conceit,  but  the  sim- 
plest justice. 

If  a  labourer  should  say  this,  there  would  be  more 
justice  on  his  side  than  on  the  side  of  the  man  of  mental 
labour.  There  is  more  justice  on  his  side,  because  the 
labour  which  is  supplied  by  the  labourer  is  more  impor- 
tant, more  indispensable,  than  the  labour  of  the  producer 
of  mental  labour,  even  for  this  reason,  that  nothing  keeps 
a  man  of  the  mental  labour  from  giving  to  the  labourer 
that  spiritual  food  which  he  has  promised  him ;  but  what 
keeps  the  labourer  from  giving  the  physical  food  is  the 
fact  that  he  himself  has  not  enough  of  this  physical  food. 

What  are  we,  the  men  of  the  mental  labour,  going  to 
answer,  if  such  simple  and  lawful  demands  are  made  on 
us  ?  How  do  we  satisfy  them  ?  With  Filaret's  Catechism, 
with  Sokoldv's  Sacred  History,  with  sheets  from  all  kinds 
of  monasteries  and  from  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Isaac, — 
for  the  gratification  of  his  religious  demands ;  with  the 
code  of  laws,  with  cassation  decrees  of  all  kinds  of  de- 


252  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

partmeDts,  and  with  all  kinds  of  statutes  of  comnjittees 
and  commissions,  —  for  the  gratification  of  the  demands 
for  order ;  with  spectral  analysis,  Ihe  measurement  of  the 
milky  ways,  imaginary  geometry,  microscopic  investiga- 
tions, disputes  about  spiritism  and  mediumism,  the  ac- 
tivity of  the  academy  of  sciences,  —  for  the  gratification 
of  his  demands  for  knowledge.  With  what  shall  we 
satisfy  his  artistic  demands  ?  With  Pushkin,  Dostoevski, 
Turgenev,  L.  Tolstoy,  with  pictures  of  the  French  Salon 
and  of  our  artists,  representing  nude  women,  satin,  vel- 
vet, landscapes,  and  genre,  with  Wagner's  music  and  our 
musicians ;  none  of  these  things  are  any  good,  or  can  be 
any  good,  because  we,  with  our  right  to  exploit  the  labour 
of  the  masses  and  with  the  absence  of  all  obligations  in 
our  preparation  of  the  spiritual  food,  have  entirely  lost 
from  view  that  one  purpose  which  our  activity  ought  to 
have.  We  do  not  even  know  what  the  working  people 
need,  we  have  even  forgotten  their  manner  of  life,  their 
view  of  things,  their  language ;  we  have  even  forgotten 
the  labouring  people,  and  we  study  them  as  an  ethno- 
graphic rarity  or  as  a  newly  discovered  America. 

And  so  we,  demanding  the  physical  food  for  ourselves, 
have  undertaken  to  furnish  the  spiritual  food  ;  but  in 
consequence  of  that  imaginary  division  of  labour,  which 
entitles  not  only  us  to  dine  first,  and  work  later,  but  also 
whole  generations  to  dine  sumptuously  without  working 
at  all,  we  have  prepared,  in  the  shape  of  a  retribution  to 
the  masses  for  our  sustenance,  what,  as  we  imagine,  is 
good  only  for  us,  for  science,  and  for  art,  but  useless 
and  quite  incomprehensible  and  disgusting,  like  Lim- 
burger  cheese,  to  those  people  whose  labours  we  devour 
under  the  pretext  of  furnishing  them  with  spiritual  food. 

In  our  blindness  we  have  to  such  an  extent  let  out  of 
view  the  obligation  which  we  have  taken  upon  ourselves 
that  we  have  even  forgotten  in  the  name  of  what  our 
labour  is  produced,  and  have    made  the  people,  whom 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  253 

we  undertook  to  serve,  a  subject  for  our  scientific  and 
artistic  activity. 

We  study  and  represent  them  for  our  amusement  and 
distraction,  and  we  have  entirely  forgotten  that  we  are 
not  to  study  and  represent  them,  but  to  serve  them. 

We  have  to  such  an  extent  let  out  of  sight  this  obliga- 
tion which  we  have  taken  upon  ourselves  that  we  have 
not  even  noticed  that  what  we  have  undertaken  to  do  in 
the  sphere  of  the  sciences  and  arts  has  been  done  not  by 
us,  but  by  others,  and  our  place  seems  to  be  occupied. 
It  turns  out  that  while  we  have  been  disputing  —  as  the 
theologians  did  about  the  germless  generation  —  about 
the  spontaneous  generation  of  the  organisms,  or  about 
spiritism,  or  about  the  form  of  the  atoms,  or  about  pan- 
genesis, or  about  what  there  is  in  the  protoplasm,  and  so 
forth,  the  failures  and  apostates  of  the  sciences  and  arts 
have  begun,  by  order  of  the  business  men,  who  have  in 
view  nothing  but  their  own  gain,  to  furnish  this  spiritual 
food  to  the  masses.  It  is  now  forty  years  in  Europe  and 
ten  with  us  in  Russia  that  there  have  been  circulated 
millions  of  books  and  pictures  and  song-books,  and  shows 
have  been  opened,  and  the  people  look  on  and  sing  and 
receive  their  spiritual  food,  but  not  from  us  who  have 
undertaken  to  furnish  it,  and  we,  who  justify  our  idleness 
by  the  spiritual  food  which  we  are  supposed  to  be  fur- 
nishing, sit  and  flap  our  eyes.  But  we  ought  not  to  flap 
our  eyes,  for  the  last  justification  is  slipping  out  from 
underneath  us. 

We  have  specialized  ourselves.  We  have  our  special 
functional  activity.  We  are  the  brain  of  the  people.  They 
feed  us,  and  we  have  undertaken  to  teach  them.  Only 
in  the  name  of  this  have  we  emancipated  ourselves  from 
labour.  Now  what  have  we  taught  them  ?  They  waited 
a  year,  tens,  hundreds  of  years.  And  still  we  discuss 
and  teach  and  amuse  one  another,  and  have  entirely  for- 
gotten them.     We  have  forgotten  them  to  such  an  extent 


254  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

that  others  have  undertaken  to  teach  and  amuse  them, 
and  we  have  not  even  noticed  witli  how  Httle  seriousness 
we  spoke  of  the  division  of  labour,  and  how  obvious  it  is 
that  what  w^e  say  of  the  benefit  which  we  confer  on  the 
masses  has  been  nothing  but  a  shameless  excuse ! 


XXXIII. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  church  guided  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  people  of  our  world ;  the  church  promised  the 
good  to  people,  and  for  this  freed  itself  from  participation 
in  humanity's  struggle  for  life.  And  the  moment  it  did 
so,  it  departed  from  its  calhng,  and  people  turned  away 
from  it.  It  is  not  the  errors  of  the  church  that  have 
ruined  it,  but  the  departure  of  its  servants  from  the  law 
of  labour,  which  was  secured  in  the  time  of  Constantine 
with  the  help  of  the  temporal  power ;  their  privilege  of 
idleness  and  luxury  has  begot  the  errors  of  the  church. 
With  this  privilege  began  the  church's  care  for  the 
church,  and  not  for  the  people  whom  it  undertook  to 
serve,  and  the  servants  of  the  church  abandoned  them- 
selves to  idleness  and  debauch. 

The  state  undertook  to  guide  the  lives  of  men.  The 
state  promised  men  justice,  peace,  security,  order,  gratifi- 
cation of  general  spiritual  and  material  needs,  and  for  this 
the  people  who  served  the  state  emancipated  themselves 
from  participation  in  humanity's  struggle  for  life.  And 
the  servants  of  the  state,  the  moment  they  acquired  the 
possibility  of  exploiting  the  labour  of  others,  did  the  same 
that  the  servants  of  the  church  did.  Their  end  was  no 
longer  the  people,  but  the  state,  and  the  servants  of  the 
state,  —  from  the  kings  down  to  the  lowest  officials,  —  in 
Eome  and  in  France,  and  in  England  and  in  Eussia  and 
in  America,  abandoned  themselves  to  idleness  and  de- 
bauch. 

And  people  lost  their  faith  in  the  state,  and  anarchy 
consciously  presents  itself  as  an  ideal. 

The  state  has  lost  its  enchantment  for  the  people,  only 

255 


256  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

because  its  servants  recognized  their  right  to  exploit  the 
labours  of  the  people. 

The  same  was  done  by  science  and  by  art,  with  the  aid 
of  the  power  of  the  state,  which  they  undertook  to  sup- 
port.    And  they  stipulated  for  themselves  the  right  to  be 
idle  and  exploit  the  labours  of  others,  and  similarly  became  . 
false  to  their  calling. 

And  similarly  their  error  was  due  only  to  this,  that  the 
servants  of  science,  by  advancing  the  falsely  raised  prin- 
ciple of  the  division  of  labour,  recognized  the  right  to  ex- 
ploit the  labours  of  others  and  lost  the  meaning  of  their 
calling,  making  as  their  aim  not  the  benefit  of  the  people, 
but  the  mysterious  benefit  of  science  and  of  the  arts,  and, 
like  their  predecessors,  they  abandoned  themselves  to 
idleness  and  debauch,  —  not  so  much  sensuous  as  mental 
debauch. 

They  say  that  science  and  the  arts  have  given  much  to 
humanity.     That  is  quite  true. 

The  church  and  the  state  have  given  much  to  human- 
ity, but  not  because  they  have  misused  their  power  and 
because  their  servants  have  departed  from  the  eternal 
obligation  of  labour  for  hfe,  which  is  common  to  all  men, 
but  in  spite  of  it. 

Even  so  science  and  the  arts  have  given  much  to  hu- 
manity, not  because  the  men  of  science  and  of  art,  under 
the  form  of  the  division  of  labour,  live  on  the  backs  of  the 
labouring  class,  but  in  spite  of  it.  The  Roman  republic 
was  not  powerful  because  her  citizens  were  able  to  lead  a 
life  of  debauch,  but  because  among  her  citizens  there  were 
virtuous  men.     The  same  is  true  of  science  and  of  art. 

Science  and  art  have  given  much  to  humanity,  not  be- 
cause their  servants  formerly  had  occasionally  a  chance, 
and  now  always  have  a  chance,  to  free  themselves  from 
labour,  but  because  there  have  existed  men  of  genius, 
who,  without  making  use  of  this  right,  have  promoted 
humanity. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO   THEN?  257 

The  class  of  the  learned  and  of  the  artists,  which,  on 
the  basis  of  the  false  division  of  labour,  makes  demands 
on  the  exploitation  of  the  labour  of  others,  cannot  cooper- 
ate with  the  success  of  true  science  and  of  true  art,  be- 
cause the  lie  cannot  produce  any  truth. 

We  have  become  so  accustomed  to  those  our  pampered, 
fat,  and  enfeebled  representatives  of  mental  labour  that 
it  appears  monstrous  to  us  to  see  a  savant  or  an  artist 
plough  or  haul  manure.  It  seems  to  us  that  everything 
will  perish,  and  that  all  his  wisdom  will  be  shaken  up  on 
a  cart,  and  that  all  those  great  artistic  pictures,  which 
he  harbours  in  his  breast,  will  become  soiled  in  the  ma- 
nure ;  but  we  have  become  so  accustomed  to  this  that  it 
does  not  seem  strange  to  us  that  our  servant  of  science, 
that  is,  the  servant  and  teacher  of  truth,  in  causing  others 
to  do  for  him  what  he  can  do  himself,  passes  half  his 
time  in  eating  sweet  food,  smoking,  chattering,  liberal 
gossips,  reading  of  newspapers  and  novels,  and  going  to  the 
theatres ;  it  does  not  appear  strange  to  us  to  see  our  phi- 
losopher in  the  restaurant,  in  the  theatre,  at  the  ball,  and 
we  are  not  surprised  to  hear  that  the  artists  who  delight 
and  ennoble  our  souls  have  passed  their  lives  in  drunken- 
ness, in  playing  cards,  and  with  women,  if  not  worse. 

Science  and  art  are  beautiful  things,  and  for  the  very 
reason  that  they  are  beautiful  they  ought  not  to  be  spoiled 
by  adding  to  them  debauch,  that  is,  the  liberation  from 
man's  obligation  by  means  of  labour  to  serve  his  hfe  and 
the  lives  of  others. 

Science  and  art  have  advanced  humanity,  yes !  but  not 
because  the  men  of  science  and  of  art,  under  the  form  of 
the  division  of  labour,  have  in  words  and,  what  is  more 
important,  with  their  deeds  taught  others  to  make  use  of 
violence,  and  to  exploit  the  poverty  and  sufferings  of  men 
for  the  purpose  of  freeing  themselves  from  the  very  first  and 
unquestionable  human  obligation  of  working  with  their 
hands  in  the  general  struggle  of  humanity  with  Xature. 


XXXIV. 

"  But  it  is  only  the  division  of  labour,  the  emancipation 
of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  from  the  necessity  of 
working  for  their  food,  that  has  made  possible  that  prog- 
ress of  the  sciences  which  we  see  in  our  time,"  they  say 
to  this. 

"  If  all  were  obliged  to  plougli,  there  would  not  have 
been  attained  those  enormous  results  which  have  been 
arrived  at  in  our  time ;  there  would  not  be  that  striking 
progress  which  has  so  increased  man's  power  over  Nature  ; 
there  would  not  be  those  astronomical  discoveries,  which 
so  startle  the  human  mind  aud  which  have  made  navi- 
gation more  secure,  nor  steamers,  railways,  wonderful 
bridges,  tunnels,  steam-engiues,  telegraphs,  photographs, 
telephones,  sewiug  -  machines,  phonographs,  electricity, 
telescopes,  spectroscopes,  microscopes,  chloroform,  anti- 
septics, carbolic  acid." 

I  cannot  count  out  everything  of  which  our  age  is  so 
proud. 

Such  a  list  and  the  raptures  over  oneself  and  over  one's 
exploits  may  be  found  in  almost  any  newspaper  and  pop- 
ular book.  These  raptures  over  oneself  are  so  frequently 
repeated,  we  are  so  overrejoiced  at  ourselves,  that  we  are 
seriously  convinced  with  Jules  Verne  that  science  and 
art  never  made  such  progress  as  in  our  time. 

Now  all  this  wonderful  progress  we  owe  to  the  division 
of  labour,  so  how  can  we  help  acknowledging  it  ? 

Let  us  admit  that  the  progress  made  in  our  century  is 
indeed  striking,  wonderful,  unusual ;  let  us  admit  that  we 

are  such  peculiarly  fortunate  men  as  to  hve  in  an  unusual 

258 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  259 

time.  But  let  us  try  aud  value  this  progress,  not  in  the 
light  of  our  self-contentment,  but  of  the  principle  defended 
by  this  progress  of  the  division  of  labour,  that  is,  by  that 
mental  labour  of  the  men  of  science  for  the  benefit  of  the 
people,  which  is  to  redeem  the  emancipation  from  labour 
of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art.  All  this  progress  is 
very  remarkable,  but  by  some  unfortunate  accident,  which 
is  acknowledged  by  the  men  of  science,  this  progress  has 
so  far  not  improved  the  condition  of  the  labourer,  but 
has  rather  made  it  worse. 

If  a  labourer,  instead  of  w^alking,  can  travel  on  the 
railway,  the  railway  has,  on  the  other  hand,  burned  his 
forest,  taken  the  grain  away  from  under  his  nose,  and 
brought  him  to  the  condition  resembling  slavery,  —  to 
that  of  the  railway  labourer. 

If,  thanks  to  steam  engines  and  machines,  a  labourer 
can  purchase  wretched  cottous,  these  eugines  and  ma- 
chines, on  the  other  hand,  have  deprived  him  of  earnings 
at  home  and  have  brought  him  to  the  state  of  complete 
slavery  to  the  manufacturer. 

If  there  are  telegraphs,  which  he  is  not  kept  from 
using,  but  which  his  means  do  not  permit  him  to  make 
use  of,  every  product  of  liis,  as  soon  as  it  rises  in  price, 
is  bought  up  under  his  nose  by  the  capitalists  at  a  low 
price,  thanks  to  the  telegraph,  before  the  labourer  finds 
out  about  the  demand  for  this  commodity. 

If  there  are  telephones  and  telescopes,  verses,  novels, 
theatres,  ballets,  symphonies,  operas,  picture-galleries,  and 
so  forth,  the  life  of  the  labourer  has  not  improved  from 
these,  because,  by  the  same  unfortunate  accident,  these 
are  not  accessible  to  him. 

Thus,  in  general,  —  and  in  this  the  men  of  science 
agree,  —  all  these  unusual  inventions  and  productions  of 
art  have  so  far  not  in  the  least  improved  the  life  of  the 
labourer,  if  they  have  not  made  it  worse. 

Thus,  if  to  the  question  about  the  reality  of  the  prog- 


2G0  WHAT    SHALL   WE    DO    THEN? 

ress  achieved  by  the  sciences  and  the  arts,  we  do  not 
apply  our  rapture  over  ourselves,  but  the  same  standard 
on  the  basis  of  which  the  division  of  labour  is  defended, 
that  is,  the  benefit  conferred  on  the  labouiint,'  people,  we 
shall  see  that  we  have  not  yet  any  firm  fountlations  for 
that  self-contentment  to  which  we  so  readily  abandon 
ourselves. 

A  peasant  will  travel  on  the  railway,  a  woman  will  buy 
cottons,  in  the  hut  there  will  be  a  lamp,  and  nut  a  torch, 
and  a  peasant  will  light  his  pipe  with  a  match,  —  that  is 
convenient ;  but  by  what  right  can  I  say  that  the  rail- 
ways and  factories  have  benetited  the  people  ? 

If  a  peasant  travels  on  the  railway  and  buys  a  lamp, 
cottons,  and  matches,  he  does  so  because  he  cannot  be 
prohibited  from  doing  so ;  but  we  all  know  that  railways 
and  factories  were  never  built  for  the  benefit  of  the 
masses,  so  what  sense  is  there  in  adducing  accidental 
comforts,  which  the  labourer  uses  fortuitously,  as  a  proof 
of  the  usefulness  of  these  institutions  for  the  people  ? 

We  all  know  tliat  if  the  engineers  and  capitalists,  who 
built  the  railway  or  the  factory,  thought  of  the  labouring 
man,  they  did  so  only  in  the  sense  of  squeezing  the  last 
strength  out  of  him.  And,  as  we  see,  both  in  our  country 
and  in  Europe,  and  in  America,  they  have  fully  accom- 
plished this. 

In  everything  harmful  there  is  something  useful.  After 
a  conflagration  we  may  warm  ourselves  at  the  fire  and 
light  our  pipe  with  a  coal;  but  what  sense  is  there  in 
saying  tliat  a  conflagration  is  useful  ? 

Let  us  at  least  not  deceive  ourselves.  We  all  know 
the  motives  by  which  roads  and  factories  are  built  and 
coal-oil  and  matches  are  obtained. 

An  engineer  builds  a  road  for  the  government,  for 
military  purposes,  or  for  the  capitalists,  for  financial  pur- 
poses. He  makes  machines  for  the  manufacturer,  for  his 
own  gain  and  for  that  of  the  capitalist.    Everything  which 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  261 

he  makes  or  invents,  he  makes  or  invents  for  the  purposes 
of  the  government,  of  the  capitalist,  of  the  rich.  All  his 
most  cunning  devices  of  engineering  are  directed  outright 
either  to  the  harm  of  the  people,  as  in  the  case  of  guns, 
torpedoes,  solitary  cells,  appliances  for  the  monopolies, 
telegraphs,  and  so  forth  ;  or  to  articles  which  fail  not  only 
to  be  useful,  but  even  applicable,  to  the  masses,  such  as 
the  electric  light,  telephones,  and  all  the  endless  improve- 
ments of  comfort ;  or,  finally,  to  such  objects  as  can  cor- 
rupt the  people  and  extort  the  last  money,  that  is,  the 
last  labour,  from  them,  such  as,  above  all,  whiskey,  wine, 
beer,  opium,  tobacco,  then  cottons,  kerchiefs,  and  all  kinds 
of  trifles. 

But  if  it  happens  that  the  inventions  of  the  men  of 
science  and  the  labours  of  the  engineers  now  and  then 
are  useful  to  the  people,  as,  for  instance,  the  railway,  cot- 
tons, iron  pots,  scythes,  this  proves  only  that  in  the  world 
everything  is  connected  and  out  of  every  harmful  activity 
there  may  come  an  accidental  benefit  for  those  to  whom 
this  activity  was  harmful. 

The  men  of  science  and  of  art  could  say  that  their 
activity  is  useful  for  the  people  only  if  the  men  of  science 
and  of  art  make  it  their  purpose  to  serve  the  people  as 
now  they  make  it  their  purpose  to  serve  the  governments 
and  the  capitalists. 

We  could  say  this  only  if  the  men  of  science  and  of 
art  made  it  their  purpose  to  attend  to  the  people's  wants, 
but  there  do  not  exist  such. 

All  the  learned  people  are  busy  with  their  priestly 
occupations,  from  which  follow  investigations  of  proto- 
plasms, spectral  analyses  of  stars,  and  so  forth.  But 
science  has  never  thought  of  this,  with  what  kind  of  an 
axe  head  and  helve  it  is  more  advantageous  to  chop  ;  what 
kind  of  a  saw  does  the  best  work ;  how  it  is  better  to 
prepare  the  dough  for  the  bread,  out  of  what  flour,  and 
how  it  is  to  be  set ;  how  to  make  a  fire,  what  stoves  to 


262  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

put  up,  what  food,  what  drink,  what  dishes  to  use,  what 
mushrooms  may  be  eaten,  and  what  is  the  best  way  to 
prepare  them.    And  yet  all  this  is  the  business  of  science. 

I  know,  according  to  its  definition,  science  must  be 
useless,  but  this  is  an  obvious  and  too  bold  an  excuse. 
The  business  of  science  is  to  serve  the  people.  We  have 
invented  telegraphs,  telephones,  phonographs,  but  what 
have  we  advanced  in  life,  in  the  labour  of  the  masses  ? 
They  have  counted  two  millions  of  bugs !  But  have  they 
domesticated  a  single  new  animal  since  Biblical  times, 
when  all  our  animals  were  already  domesticated  ?  The 
elk,  the  stag,  the  partridge,  the  quail,  the  grouse,  are  still 
wild.  The  botanists  have  found  the  cell,  and  the  proto- 
plasm in  the  cell,  and  something  else  in  the  protoplasm, 
and  something  else  inside  of  that.  These  occupations 
will  apparently  not  end  for  a  long  time,  because  appar- 
ently there  can  be  no  end  to  them,  and  so  they  will  never 
have  the  time  to  busy  themselves  with  what  people  need. 
And  so  again,  since  Egyptian  and  Jewish  antiquity,  when 
the  wheat  and  lentils  were  already  cultivated,  up  to  our 
time  not  one  plant  has  been  added  to  the  food  of  the 
people,  unless  it  be  the  potato,  which,  however,  was  not 
acquired  through  science. 

They  have  invented  torpedoes,  appliances  for  the  mon- 
opolies and  for  privies,  but  the  spinning-wheel,  the  weaver's 
loom,  the  plough,  the  axe  handle,  the  flail,  the  rake,  the 
sweep,  the  vat,  —  all  these  are  precisely  as  they  were  in 
the  time  of  Riirik.  And  if  anything  has  been  changed,  it 
has  not  been  changed  by  scientific  men. 

The  same  is  true  of  art.  We  have  raised  a  mass  of 
men  to  the  level  of  great  writers,  have  analyzed  these 
writers  down  to  the  minutest  details,  and  have  written 
mountains  of  criticism,  and  criticisms  on  the  criticisms, 
and  again  criticisms  on  the  criticisms  of  the  criticisms,  and 
have  collected  picture-galleries,  and  have  studied  all  kinds 
of  schools  of  art  down  to  the  finest  points,  and  we  have 


WHAT   SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  263 

symphonies  and  operas  such  as  give  even  us  trouble  to 
listen  to.  And  what  have  we  added  to  the  popular  epics, 
legends,  fairy-tales,  songs  ?  What  pictures  and  what 
music  have  we  given  to  the  masses  ?  At  Nikolskaya  they 
make  books  and  pictures  for  the  people,  and  in  Tula 
accordions,  and  in  neither  have  we  taken  any  part. 

Most  striking  and  ob\dous  is  the  falseness  of  the  direc- 
tion of  our  science  and  our  arts  in  those  very  branches 
which,  one  would  think,  from  their  very  problems  ought 
to  be  useful  to  the  people,  but  which,  in  consequence  of 
the  false  direction,  present  themselves  as  rather  pernicious 
than  useful. 

An  engineer,  physician,  teacher,  artist,  author,  to  judge 
from  his  calling,  ought  to  serve  the  people,  and  what 
happens  ?  With  the  present  tendencies  they  can  do 
nothing  but  harm  to  the  people. 

An  engineer,  a  mechanician,  has  to  work  with  a  capital. 
Without  a  capital  he  is  not  good  for  anything.  All  his 
knowledge  is  such  that  in  order  to  manifest  it  he  needs 
capital  and  the  exploitation  of  the  labourer  on  a  large 
scale,  and,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  he  has  been 
taught  to  spend  at  least  fifteen  hundred  or  two  thousand 
a  year,  and  so  cannot  go  to  the  country  where  nobody  can 
give  him  any  remuneration,  he  by  his  very  occupation  is 
no  good  for  serving  the  people.  He  can  by  means  of 
higher  mathematics  figure  out  the  span  of  a  bridge  and 
the  transmission  of  a  motor,  and  so  forth,  but  he  is  non- 
plussed in  the  presence  of  the  simple  demands  of  the 
people's  labour.  How  to  improve  a  plough  or  a  cart, 
how  to  make  a  brook  fordable,  —  problems  which  exist 
in  those  conditions  of  life  in  which  the  labourer  finds  him- 
self, —  of  all  that  he  knows  nothing  and  understands  less 
than  the  very  lowest  peasant.  Give  him  shops,  all  the 
working  people  he  wants,  order  machines  from  abroad, 
and  then  he  will  fix  everything.  But  he  knows  nothing, 
and  can  know  nothing,  about  finding,  under  certain  condi- 


264  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

tions  of  the  labour  of  millions  of  people,  the  means  for 
making  this  labour  easier,  and  by  his  occupations,  habits, 
and  demands  made  on  him  by  hfe  he  is  no  good  for  this 
work. 

The  physician  is  in  a  still  worse  condition.  His  whole 
imaginary  science  is  so  placed  that  he  is  able  to  cure  only 
those  who  do  notliiug  and  are  able  to  make  use  of  the 
labours  of  others.  He  needs  an  endless  number  of  costly 
appliances,  of  rooms,  food,  privy,  in  order  that  he  may  be 
able  to  act  scientifically  ;  in  addition  to  his  salary  he 
needs  such  expenses  that,  in  order  to  cure  a  single  patient, 
he  has  to  starve  to  death  a  hundred  of  those  who  will 
bear  these  expenses.  He  has  studied  with  celebrities  in 
the  capitals,  who  make  a  practice  only  of  such  patients  as 
can  be  cured  in  clinics,  or  who,  curing  themselves,  are 
able  to  buy  the  necessary  machiues  for  their  cure,  and 
even  to  go  at  once  from  the  north  to  the  south,  or  to 
such  and  such  watering-places. 

Their  science  is  such  that  each  county  physician  com- 
plains of  not  having  the  means  for  curing  the  labouring 
people,  that  they  are  so  poor  that  it  is  impossible  to  place 
the  patient  in  hygienic  conditions,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
this  physician  complains  that  there  are  no  hospitals,  that 
he  cannot  manage  all  the  work,  and  that  he  needs  more 
assistants,  doctors,  and  surgical  help.  What  conclusion 
do  we  come  to  ?  To  this,  that  the  chief  calamity  of  the 
masses,  from  which  originate  and  spread  their  diseases, 
and  remain  uncured,  is  the  insufficiency  of  the  means  for 
Hfe. 

And  here  science  under  the  banner  of  the  division  of 
labour  calls  its  champions  to  the  aid  of  the  masses.  All 
the  science  has  been  adapted  for  the  wealthy  classes  and 
puts  the  problem  as  to  how  to  cure  those  people  who  can 
get  everything  for  themselves,  and  send  those  who  have 
nothing  superfluous  to  be  cured  in  the  same  way. 

But  the  means  are  wanting,  and  so  it  is  necessary  to 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN?  265 

take  them  from  the  masses,  who  have  aihnents  and  he- 
come  infected,  but  are  not  cured,  for  lack  of  means. 

And  the  defenders  of  medicme  for  the  people  say  that 
this  business  has  so  far  been  httle  developed. 

It  is  evident  that  it  has  been  little  developed,  because 
if,  God  forfend,  it  should  be  developed,  and  the  people 
were  shouldered  with  twenty  instead  of  two  doctors,  mid- 
wives,  and  surgical  assistants  to  each  county,  —  there 
would  soon  be  no  persons  to  cure.  The  scientific  coopera- 
tion, of  which  the  defenders  of  the  science  speak,  ought 
to  be  of  a  very  different  kind.  The  cooperation  which 
ought  to  be  has  not  yet  begun.  It  will  begin  when  the 
man  of  science,  the  engineer  or  the  physician,  shall  not 
regard  as  legal  that  division,  that  is,  seizure  of  other 
people's  labour,  which  now  exists;  when  he  shall  not 
consider  it  his  right  to  take  from  people,  I  do  not  say 
hundreds  of  thousands,  but  even  a  modest  one  thousand 
or  five  hundred  roubles  for  his  cooperation,  and  shall  live 
among  the  labouring  people  in  the  same  conditions  as 
they,  and  then  shall  apply  their  knowledge  to  questions 
of  mechanics,  engineering,  hygiene,  and  the  curing  of  the 
labouring  masses.  But  now  the  science,  which  grows  fat 
at  the  expense  of  the  labouring  people,  has  entirely  for- 
gotten the  conditions  of  the  life  of  these  people,  ignores 
(as  it  expresses  itself)  these  conditions,  and  most  seriously 
feels  offended  because  its  supposed  knowledge  finds  no 
application  among  the  people. 

The  sphere  of  medicine,  hke  that  of  engineering,  still 
lies  untouched.  All  the  questions  as  to  how  best  to 
divide  the  time  of  labour,  how  best  to  nourish  oneself, 
how,  in  what  manner,  when  to  dress  oneself  and  counter- 
act the  dampness  and  cold,  how  best  to  wash,  nurse  the 
children,  swaddle  them,  and  so  forth,  especially  in  the  con- 
ditions in  w^hich  the  labouring  people  are,  —  aU  these 
questions  have  not  yet  been  put. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  activity  of  the  scientific,  the 


266  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

pedagogical  teachers.  Here  science  has  put  the  matter 
in  such  a  shape  that  according  to  science  it  is  possible  to 
teach  rich  people  only,  and  the  teachers,  like  the  engineers 
and  physicians,  involuntarily  cling  to  money,  and  with  us 
more  particularly  to  the  government. 

And  this  cannot  be  otherwise,  because  a  model  school 
(as  a  general  rule,  the  more  scientific  the  arrangement 
of  the  school,  the  more  expensive  it  is),  with  adjustable 
benches,  globes,  and  maps,  and  libraries,  and  methodics  for 
teacher  and  pupils,  is  such  that  it  demands  the  doubling 
of  the  taxes  for  each  village.     So  science  demands. 

The  masses  need  the  children  for  work,  and  the  more 
they  need  them,  the  poorer  they  are.  The  scientific 
defenders  say :  Pedagogy  even  now  benefits  the  people, 
and  when  it  is  developed  it  will  be  better  still.  Yes,  peda- 
gogy will  be  developed,  and,  instead  of  twenty,  there  will  be 
one  hundred  schools  to  each  county,  and  all  of  them  scien- 
tific, and  the  masses  will  support  these  schools,  —  then 
they  will  grow  poorer  still  and  will  need  the  work  of 
their  children  even  more  than  before. 

"  What  is  to  be  done  ? "  people  say  to  this. 

The  government  will  build  the  schools  and  will  make 
instruction  compulsory,  as  in  Europe ;  but  the  money  will 
again  be  taken  from  the  people,  and  they  will  work  harder 
than  ever,  and  will  have  less  leisure  from  work,  and  there 
will  be  no  compulsory  education.  Again  there  is  this  one 
salvation,  and  this  is,  that  the  teacher  should  live  in  the 
conditions  of  the  labourer  and  should  teach  for  the  remu- 
neration which  will  voluntarily  and  gladly  be  given  him. 

Such  is  the  false  tendency  of  science,  which  deprives  it 
of  the  possibility  of  fulfilling  its  obligation,  which  is,  to 
serve  the  masses.  Still  more  obvious  is  this  false  tend- 
ency of  our  intellectual  classes  in  the  case  of  the  activity 
of  art,  which  from  its  very  purpose  ought  to  be  accessible 
to  the  masses. 

Science  may  fall  back  on  its  silly  excuse  that  science 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  267 

acts  for  science,  and  that,  when  it  has  been  worked  out  by 
the  learned,  it  will  become  accessible  to  the  masses  also ; 
but  art  —  if  it  is  art  —  must  be  accessible  to  all,  espe- 
cially to  those  in  whose  name  it  is  produced.  Our  con- 
dition of  art  strikingly  arraigns  the  workers  of  art  for  not 
wanting,  nor  knowing  how,  nor  being  able  to  be  useful  to 
the  masses. 

A  painter,  to  prepare  his  great  productions,  must  have 
a  studio,  which  is  to  be  large  enough  for  an  association 
of  forty  joiners  or  shoemakers  to  work  in,  who  are  freezing 
and  choking  to  death  in  miserable  purlieus ;  but  that  is 
not  enough:  he  needs  Nature,  costumes,  travels.  The 
Academy  of  Arts  has  spent  millions,  collected  from  the 
people,  for  the  encouragement  of  the  arts,  and  the  pro- 
ductions of  this  art  hang  in  palaces  and  are  incompre- 
hensible and  useless  to  the  masses. 

Musicians,  to  express  their  great  ideas,  have  to  bring 
together  some  two  hundred  men  in  white  neckties  or  in 
costumes,  and  to  spend  hundreds  of  thousands  in  order 
to  stage  an  opera.  And  the  productions  of  this  art  cannot 
call  forth  among  the  people,  even  if  they  ever  could  make 
use  of  them,  anything  but  perplexity  and  ennui. 

Writers,  composers,  it  would  seem,  are  in  no  need  of 
immediate  surroundings,  in  studios.  Nature,  orchestras, 
and  actors ;  but  even  here  it  appears  that  a  writer,  a 
composer,  to  say  nothing  of  the  comforts  of  his  apart- 
ments, and  of  all  the  enjoyments  of  life,  needs,  for  the 
preparation  of  his  great  productions,  travel,  palaces,  cabi- 
nets, the  enjoyment  of  the  arts,  the  attendance  at  theatres, 
concerts,  balls,  and  so  forth.  If  he  does  not  himself  earn 
a  competence,  he  gets  a  pension,  that  he  may  compose 
better.  And  again,  these  compositions,  so  much  esteemed 
by  us,  remain  rubbish  for  the  people,  and  are  absolutely 
useless  to  them. 

What  if,  as  the  men  of  the  sciences  and  arts  wish,  there 
will  breed  even  more  such  purveyors  of  spiritual  pabulum. 


-168  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  Y 

and  we  shall  have  in  each  village  to  build  a  studio,  intro- 
duce orchestras,  and  maintain  a  composer  in  those  con- 
ditions which  the  men  of  the  arts  regard  as  indispensable 
for  themselves  ? 

I  assume  that  the  labouring  people  will  forego  the 
pleasure  of  ever  seeing  a  picture,  hearing  a  symphony,  or 
reading  verses  or  novels,  only  not  to  be  obliged  to  feed  all 
these  drones. 

But  why  could  not  the  men  of  the  arts  serve  the 
people  ?  In  every  hut  there  are  images  and  pictures  ; 
every  peasant,  man  or  woman,  sings  ;  many  of  them  have 
musical  instruments,  and  all  tell  stories  and  recite  verses, 
while  many  read.  How  is  it  that  the  two  things,  which 
are  made  one  for  the  other,  like  a  key  and  a  lock,  have 
gone  so  far  apart  that  there  is  not  even  a  chance  for 
bringing  them  together  ? 

Tell  a  painter  without  a  studio,  Nature,  or  costumes  to 
paint  pictures  worth  five  kopeks  each,  and  he  will  tell  you 
that  this  means  renouncing  art,  as  he  understands  it.  TeU 
a  musician  to  play  the  balalayka,  accordion,  or  guitar,  and 
to  teach  the  women  to  sing  songs.  Tell  the  poet  to  throw 
away  his  poems,  his  novels,  his  satires,  and  to  compose 
song-books,  stories,  and  fairy-tales  which  the  unlettered 
may  understand  —  and  they  will  tell  you  that  you  are 
crazy.  But  is  it  less  insanity  for  people,  who,  only  in  the 
name  of  serving  as  spiritual  pabulum  to  those  men  who 
have  brought  them  up,  and  feed  and  clothe  them,  have 
emancipated  themselves  from  labour,  so  to  forget  their 
obligation  as  to  become  unaccustomed  to  prepare  this  food 
which  is  so  useful  to  the  masses,  and  to  regard  this  very 
departure  from  their  obligation  as  their  special  distinc- 
tion? 

"  But  so  it  is  everywhere,"  you  are  told. 

It  is  irrational  everywhere,  and  it  will  remain  so  as 
long  as  people,  under  the  pretext  of  the  division  of  labour 
and  of  the  promise  of   serving  as  spiritual  food  for  the 


WHAT    SUALL    WE    DO    THEN?  269 

masses,  will  only  absorb  the  labour  of  the  masses.  There 
will  be  a  ministration  to  the  masses  by  means  of  the 
sciences  and  the  arts  only  when  the  people  who  live 
among  the  masses  and  like  the  masses,  without  claiming 
any  privileges,  will  offer  them  their  scientific  and  artistic 
services,  which  to  accept  or  reiect  will  depend  on  the  will 
of  the  masses. 


XXXV. 

To  say  that  the  activity  of  the  sciences  and  arts  has 
cooperated  with  the  forward  movement  of  humanity, 
comprehending  by  this  activity  what  is  now  called  by 
this  name,  is  the  same  as  to  say  that  the  clumsy,  inter- 
fering plashing  of  the  oars  in  a  vessel  which  is  going 
down  the  stream  is  cooperating  with  the  motion  of  the 
vessel.     It  only  interferes  with  it. 

The  so-called  division  of  labour,  that  is,  the  seizure  of 
other  people's  labour,  which  in  our  day  has  become  a  con- 
dition of  the  activity  of  the  men  of  science  and  of  art,  has 
been  and  still  remains  the  chief  cause  of  the  slow  forward 
movement  of  humanity.  The  proof  of  this  is  found  in 
that  confession  of  all  men  of  science  that  the  acquisitions 
of  science  and  of  the  arts  are  inaccessible  to  the  labour- 
ing masses,  on  account  of  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth. 

But  the  inequality  of  this  distribution  does  not  diminish 
proportionately  with  the  progress  of  the  sciences  and  arts, 
but  only  keeps  increasing.  No  wonder  that  it  is  so, 
because  this  unequal  distribution  of  wealth  arises  only 
from  the  theory  of  the  division  of  labour,  which  is  preached 
by  the  men  of  science  and  of  art  for  their  personal,  selfish 
ends.  Science  defends  the  division  of  labour  as  an  un- 
changeable law,  sees  that  the  distribution  of  wealth,  which 
is  based  on  the  division  of  labour,  is  incorrect  and  per- 
nicious, and  asserts  that  its  activity,  which  recognizes  the 
division  of  labour,  will  make  people  happy.  It  turns  out 
that  one  set  of  men  make  use  of  the  labours  of  others ; 
but,  if  they  will  for  a  very  long  time  and  in  still  greater 

270 


WHAT    SHALL    WE   DO    THEN?  271 

measure  make  use  of  the  labours  of  others,  this  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth,  that  is,  the  exploitation  of  the 
labours  of  others,  will  come  to  an  end. 

Men  are  standing  at  an  ever-increasing  source  of  water, 
and  are  busy  leading  it  aside  from  the  thirsting  people,  and 
assert  that  it  is  they  who  are  producing  this  water, 
and  that  very,  very  soon  there  will  be  enough  of  it  to 
suffice  for  all.  But  this  water,  which  has  been  flowing 
without  interruption,  and  which  supports  all  humanity, 
is  not  only  not  the  consequence  of  the  activity  of  those 
men  who,  standing  at  the  source,  are  leading  it  aside,  but 
it  flows  and  spreads,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  these  men 
to  arrest  this  flow. 

There  has  always  existed  the  true  church  in  the  sense 
of  people  who  are  united  in  the  highest  truth  attainable 
at  a  certain  period  of  humanity,  and  always  it  has  been 
different  from  the  church  which  called  itself  so,  and  there 
has  always  existed  science  and  art,  but  not  what  called 
itself  by  that  name. 

To  those  who  recognize  themselves  as  representatives 
of  science  and  of  art  of  a  certain  period,  it  always  seems 
that  they  have  done,  and,  above  all,  will  this  very  minute 
do,  some  remarkable  miracles,  and  that  outside  of  them 
there  has  never  been  any  science  or  any  art.  Thus  it 
seemed  to  the  sophists,  scholastics,  alchemists,  Cabalists, 
Talmudists,  and  to  our  scientific  science,  and  to  our  art 
for  art's  sake. 


XXXVI. 

"  But  science  and  art !  You  deny  science  and  art,  that 
is,  what  humanity  lives  by,"  They  do  not  exactly  offer 
this  objection  to  me,  but  always  use  this  method  in  order 
to  reject  my  arguments,  without  analyzing  them. 

"  He  denies  science  and  art,  —  he  wants  to  bring  people 
back  to  that  savage  state,  —  so  what  use  is  there  of 
listening  to  him  or  speaking  with  him  ?  " 

But  that  is  not  true.  I  am  not  only  far  from  denying 
science,  that  is,  the  rational  human  activity,  and  art, — 
the  expression  of  this  rational  activity,  but  in  the  name 
of  this  ratioual  activity  and  its  expressions  do  1  say  what 
I  do ;  ouly  in  order  that  humanity  may  have  a  chance  to 
get  out  of  that  savage  state  into  which  it  is  rapidly  fall- 
ing, thanks  to  the  false  teaching  of  our  time,  do  I  speak 
as  I  do. 

Science  and  art  are  as  indispensable  for  men  as  food, 
and  drink,  and  raiment,  and  even  more  indispensable  than 
these ;  but  they  do  not  become  such  because  we  decide 
that  what  we  call  science  and  art  is  indispensable,  but 
because  it  is  really  indispensable  to  men. 

If  they  should  prepare  hay  for  the  physical  food  of 
men,  my  conviction  that  hay  is  a  food  for  men  will  not 
make  the  hay  be  a  food  for  men.  I  cannot  say :  "  Why 
do  you  not  eat  hay,  since  it  is  an  indispensable  food  ? " 
It  may  happen  that  what  is  offered  by  me  is  no  food. 

Precisely  the  same  has  happened  with  science  and  art. 
But  we  imagine  that  if  to  a  Greek  word  we  shall  add  the 
word  "  logy  "  and  call  it  science,  it  will  really  be  a  sci- 
ence ;  and  if  some  abominable  work,  as  the  painting  of 

272 


WHAT'  SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  27S 

nude  womeu,  shall  be  called  by  a  Greek  word,  and  we 
shall  say  that  it  is  art,  it  will  really  be  art.  But  no  mat- 
ter how  much  we  say  this,  the  thing  with  which  we  busy 
ourselves,  counting  bugs  and  investigating  the  chemical 
composition  of  the  milky  way,  drawing  nymphs  and  his- 
torical pictures,  composing  stories  and  symphonies,  our 
thing  will  become  neither  science  nor  art  so  long  as  it 
is  not  gladly  accepted  by  those  people  for  whom  it  is 
being  done.     But  so  far  it  is  not  being  accepted. 

If  only  one  class  of  men  were  permitted  to  produce 
food,  and  all  the  others  were  forbidden  to  do  that,  or 
were  placed  in  an  impossible  position  for  the  production 
of  food,  I  imagine  that  the  quality  of  the  food  would 
deteriorate.  If  people  who  had  a  monopoly  for  the  pro- 
duction of  food  were  Russian  peasants,  there  would  exist 
no  other  food  than  black  bread,  kvas,  potatoes,  and  onions, 
nothing  but  what  they  like  and  what  pleases  them.  The 
same  would  happen  with  that  highest  activity  of  science 
and  of  art,  if  one  caste  appropriated  to  itself  the  monopoly^ 
—  but  with  this  difference,  that  in  physical  food  there 
cannot  be  any  very  great  deviation  from  naturalness : 
though  bread  and  onions  are  not  very  palatable  food, 
still  they  are  edible ;  but  in  the  spiritual  food  there  can 
be  the  greatest  deviations,  and  some  people  can  for  a  long 
time  exist  on  useless,  or  even  harmful,  poisonous  spiritual 
food,  and  can  slowly  kill  themselves  with  opium  or  alco- 
hol, and  offer  the  same  food  to  the  masses. 

It  is  this  that  has  happened  with  us.  And  it  has 
happened  because  the  position  of  the  men  of  science  and 
of  art  is  privileged,  because  science  and  art  in  our  world 
are  not  the  rational  activity  of  all  humanity  \vithout 
exception,  which  secretes  its  best  forces  in  order  to  serve 
science  and  art,  but  the  activity  of  a  small  circle  of  men 
having  a  monopoly  of  these  occupations  and  calling 
themselves  men  of  science  and  of  art,  and  so  having 
perverted  the  very  concepts  of  science  and  of   art,  and 


274  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

having  lost  the  meaning  of  their  calling,  and  busy  amus- 
ing and  saving  from  torturing  ennui  their  small  circle  of 
drones. 

Ever  since  men  have  existed,  they  have  always  had 
science  in  its  simplest  and  broadest  sense.  Science,  in 
the  sense  of  all  the  knowledge  of  humanity,  has  always 
been  and  always  will  be,  and  without  it  life  is  unthink- 
able:  there  is  no  need  of  attacking  or  of  defending  it. 
But-  the  point  is  that  the  sphere  of  this  knowledge  is  so 
varied,  and  there  enter  into  it  so  many  various  branches 
of  knowledge,  —  from  the  knowledge  of  how  to  mine  iron 
to  the  knowledge  about  the  motion  of  the  luminaries,  — 
that  a  man  is  lost  in  these  various  branches  of  knowledge, 
if  he  has  no  guiding  thread  by  which  he  can  decide  which 
of  all  the  branches  of  knowledge  is  most  important  and 
which  least  important  for  him. 

And  so  the  highest  wisdom  of  men  has  always  con- 
sisted in  finding  that  guiding  thread  along  which  is  to 
be  located  the  knowledge  of  men :  which  is  first,  and 
which  of  less  importance. 

And  this  human  knowledge,  which  guides  all  the  other 
knowledge,  has  always  been  called  science  in  the  narrower 
sense.  Such  science  has,  until  our  own  time,  always  ex- 
isted in  those  human  societies  which  have  emerged  from 
the  original  savage  state. 

Ever  since  humanity  has  existed,  there  have  always, 
among  all  nations,  appeared  teachers  who  composed 
science  in  its  narrower  sense,  the  science  as  to  what  is 
most  important  for  men  to  know.  This  science  has 
always  had  for  its  object  the  knowledge  of  what  the 
purpose,  and  so  the  true  good,  of  each  man  and  all  men 
is.  This  science  has  served  as  a  guiding  thread  in  the 
definition  of  the  meaning  of  all  other  knowledge  and  in 
its  expression,  —  art. 

Those  branches  of  knowledge  and  those  arts  which 
have  cooperated  with  and  approached  most  the  fundamen- 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       275 

tal  science  about  the  purpose  and  good  of  all  men  have 
stood  highest  in  public  opinion,  and  vice  versa. 

Such  was  the  science  of  Confucius,  Buddha,  Moses, 
Socrates,  Christ,  Mohammed,  the  science  as  it  has  been 
understood  by  all  men,  with  the  exception  of  the  men  of 
our  circle  of  so-called  cultured  people. 

Such  a  science  has  not  only  always  occupied  a  leading 
place,  but  has  been  the  one  science  from  which  the  mean- 
ing of  all  others  has  been  determined. 

And  this  was  not  at  all  the  case  because,  as  the  so- 
called  learned  men  of  our  time  think,  the  cheats,  priests, 
and  teachers  of  this  science  gave  it  such  a  significance, 
but  because,  indeed,  as  anybody  may  find  out  by  his 
inner  experience,  without  the  science  of  that  wherein  lies 
the  destiny  and  good  of  man  there  can  be  no  estimation 
and  no  choice  of  the  sciences  and  arts. 

And  so  there  cannot  even  be  any  study  of  the  sciences, 
for  there  is  an  endless  number  of  subjects  for  the  sciences  ; 
I  underline  the  word  "  endless,"  because  I  mean  it  in  its 
exact  sense. 

Without  the  knowledge  of  that  wherein  lies  the  destiny 
and  the  good  of  men,  all  the  other  sciences  and  arts  be- 
come, as  indeed  they  are  with  us,  an  idle  and  harmful 
plaything.  Humanity  has  Hved,  and  it  has  never  lived 
without  the  science  of  that  wherein  is  the  destiny  and 
the  good  of  men.  It  is  true  that  the  science  of  the  good 
of  men  seems  to  a  superficial  observer  to  be  different  with 
the  Buddhists,  Brahmins,  Jews,  Christians,  Confucianists, 
Taoists  (though  it  is  enough  for  one  to  look  more  carefully 
at  these  teachings  in  order  to  see  their  identical  essence), 
but  wherever  we  know  men  who  have  come  out  of 
their  savage  state,  we  find  this  science,  and  suddenly  it 
turns  out  that  the  men  of  our  time  have  decided  that  this 
very  science,  which  heretofore  was  a  guide  to  all  human 
knowledge,  is  in  the  way  of  everything. 

People  put  up  buildings,  and  one  builder  makes  one 


276  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

calculation,  another  —  another,  and  a  third  —  a  third. 
The  calculations  vary  somewhat,  but  they  are  correct,  so 
that  each  of  them  sees  that  if  everything  shall  be  done 
according  to  the  calculation,  the  building  will  be  built. 

Such  builders  are  Confucius,  Buddha,  Moses,  Christ. 

Suddenly  people  come  and  affirm  that  the  main  thing 
is  not  to  have  any  calculation,  but  to  build  everything  at 
random,  trusting  to  the  eyes.  And  this  "  at  random  " 
these  people  call  a  most  exact  science,  just  as  the  Pope  is 
called  most  holy.  People  deny  every  science,  the  very 
essence  of  science,  —  the  determination  of  that  wherein 
lies  the  destiny  and  the  good  of  men,  —  and  this  denial 
they  call  science.  Ever  since  men  have  existed,  there 
have  bred  among  them  great  minds  which,  in  the  struggle 
with  the  demands  of  reason  and  of  conscience,  have  asked 
themselves  in  what  consists  the  destiny  and  the  good  not 
of  themselves  alone,  but  also  of  every  man. 

"  What  does  the  force  which  has  produced  me  and 
which  guides  me  want  of  me  and  of  every  other  man  ? 
And  what  must  I  do  in  order  to  satisfy  the  demands  of 
the  personal  and  of  the  common  good,  which  are  inherent 
m  me  ? 

They  asked  themselves :  "  I  am  a  whole  and  a  part  of 
sometliing  immeasurable,  something  infinite :  what  are 
my  relations  to  similar  parts,  —  to  men,  —  and  to  the 
whole  ? " 

And  from  the  voice  of  conscience,  and  from  reason, 
and  from  the  consideration  of  what  those  who  have  lived 
before  them  and  their  contemporaries  have  told  them, 
those  who  have  given  themselves  these  questions,  these 
great  teachers,  deduce  their  teachings,  which  are  simple, 
clear,  comprehensible  to  all  men,  and  always  such  as 
could  be  fulfilled. 

Such  men  were  of  the  first,  the  second,  the  third,  and 
the  very  last  magnitude.     Of  such  people  the  world  is  full. 

All  living  men  put  to  themselves  the  question :  "  How 


WHAT   SnALL    WE    DO    THEN?  277 

shall  I  harmonize  my  demands  for  the  good  of  my 
personal  life  with  my  conscience  and  my  reason,  which 
demand  the  common  good  of  men  ? "  And  from  this 
common  labour  there  are  slowly,  but  uninterruptedly, 
worked  out  new  forms  of  life,  which  are  nearer  to  the 
demands  of  reason  and  of  conscience. 

Suddenly  there  appears  a  new  caste  of  men,  who  say : 
"  All  this  is  nonsense,  and  has  to  be  given  up."  Such  is 
the  deductive  method  of  reasoning  (no  one  has  ever  been 
able  to  comprehend  wherein  the  difference  is  between 
the  deductive  and  the  inductive  methods),  such  are  the 
methods  of  the  theological  and  the  metaphysical  periods. 
"  Everything  which  men  reveal  through  their  inner  ex- 
perience and  communicate  to  one  another  concerning  the 
cognition  of  the  law  of  their  life  "  (of  the  functional  activ- 
ity, as  they  say  in  their  jargon),  "  everything  which  the 
greatest  minds  of  humanity  have  done  on  this  path  since 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  —  all  that  is  nonsense  and  of 
no  consequence." 

According  to  this  new  teaching  it  turns  out  like  this : 
you  are  a  cell  of  an  organism,  and  the  problem  of  your 
rational  activity  consists  in  determining  your  functional 
activity ;  and  in  order  to  determine  this  functional  activ- 
ity of  yours,  you  need  only  observe  outside  of  yourself. 
The  fact  that  you  are  a  thinking,  suffering,  talking,  com- 
prehending cell,  and  that,  therefore,  you  can  ask  another 
similar  talking  cell  whether  it  suffers,  rejoices,  and  feels 
like  you,  and  thus  verify  your  own  experience ;  that  you 
are  able  to  utilize  that  which  suffering,  reasoning,  and 
talking  cells  who  have  lived  before  you  have  recorded ; 
that  you  have  millions  of  cells  which  confirm  your  obser- 
vations by  their  agreement  with  the  cells  which  have 
recorded  their  observations ;  that,  above  all,  you  yourself 
are  living  cells  which  by  their  immediate  inner  experience 
recognize  the  regularity  or  irregularity  of  their  functional 
activities,  —  all  that  has  no  meaning,  all  that  is  a  bad, 


278  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

a  false  method.  The  true,  the  scientific  method  is  hke 
this :  if  you  want  to  know  wherein  consists  your  func- 
tional activity,  that  is,  wherein  is  your  destiny  and  your 
good,  and  the  destiny  and  the  good  of  all  humanity  and 
of  all  the  world,  you  must  first  of  all  stop  hstening  to  the 
voice  and  to  the  demand  of  your  conscience  and  of  your 
reason,  which  make  themselves  knovra  in  you  and  in 
your  like ;  you  must  stop  believing  in  all  that  the  great 
teachers  of  humanity  have  said  about  their  reason  and 
their  conscience,  must  consider  all  that  nonsense,  and  be- 
gin anew.  And  in  order  to  understand  everything  from 
the  beginning,  you  must  look  through  a  microscope  at  the 
motion  of  the  amcebas  and  the  cells  in  rain-worms,  or, 
more  comfortably  still,  you  must  believe  in  everything 
which  men  with  the  diploma  of  infallibility  will  tell  you 
about  these  things.  And  looking  at  the  motion  of  these 
amoebas  and  cells,  or  reading  about  what  others  have  seen, 
you  must  ascribe  to  these  cells  their  human  feelings  and 
calculations  as  to  what  they  wish,  whither  they  tend, 
what  they  reflect  and  calculate  on,  and  what  they  are 
used  to ;  and  from  these  observations  (in  which  every 
word  is  an  error  of  thought  or  of  expression)  judge  by 
analogy  what  you  are,  what  your  destiny  is,  and  in  what 
lies  your  good  and  that  of  other  similar  cells.  In  order 
to  understand  yourself  you  must  study  not  only  the  rain- 
worm, which  you  see,  but  also  the  microscopic  beings, 
which  you  almost  do  not  see,  and  the  transformations 
from  one  being  into  another,  which  no  man  has  ever  seen, 
and  you  certainly  will  never  see. 

The  same  is  true  of  art.  Where  there  has  been  true 
science,  art  has  always  been  an  expression  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  man's  destiny  and  good.  Ever  since  men  have 
existed  they  have  out  of  the  whole  activity  of  the  expres- 
sions of  every  kind  of  knowledge  extracted  the  chief 
expression,  the  knowledge  of  the  destiny  and  the  good, 
and  the  expression  of  this  knowledge  was  art  in  its  nar- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  279 

row  sense.  Ever  siuce  there  have  been  men,  there  have 
been  those  who  are  particularly  sensitive  and  responsive 
to  the  teaching  about  the  good  and  the  destiny  of  man, 
and  who  on  harps  and  timbrels,  in  representations  and  in 
words,  have  expressed  their  human  struggle  with  the  de- 
ceptions which  drew  them  away  from  their  destiny,  their 
sufferings  in  this  struggle,  their  hopes  in  the  triumph  of 
goodness,  their  despairs  on  account  of  the  triumph  of  evil, 
and  their  raptures  at  the  consciousness  of  this  approaching 
good. 

Ever  since  there  have  been  men,  true  art,  the  one 
which  has  been  highly  valued  by  men,  has  had  no  mean- 
ing except  as  an  expression  about  the  destiny  and  the 
good  of  man. 

At  all  times,  and  down  to  our  day,  art  has  served  the 
teaching  about  life,  what  later  was  called  religion,  and 
only  then  is  it  what  is  so  highly  valued  by  men.  But  at 
the  same  time  that  the  place  of  the  science  about  the 
destiny  and  the  good  was  occupied  by  the  science  about 
everything  that  might  come  to  one's  mind,  science  lost 
its  meaning  and  significance,  and  the  true  science  was 
contemptuously  called  religion,  and  at  the  same  time 
there  disappeared  art  as  an  important  human  activity. 

So  long  as  there  was  a  church,  as  a  teaching  about  the 
destiny  and  the  good,  art  served  the  church  and  was 
the  true  art ;  but  ever  since  art  has  left  the  church  and 
begun  to  serve  science,  while  science  serves  anything  that 
may  occur  to  it,  art  has  lost  its  meaning  and,  in  spite  of 
the  assertion  of  the  rights,  based  on  ancient  memory,  and 
of  the  insipid  claim,  which  only  proves  the  loss  of  its 
calling,  that  art  serves  art,  it  has  become  a  trade  which 
furnishes  men  with  what  is  pleasing,  and  inevitably 
blends  with  the  choreographic,  culinary,  tonsorial,  and 
cosmetic  arts,  the  producers  of  which  call  themselves 
artists  with  the  same  right  as  do  the  poets,  painters,  and 
musicians  of  our  time. 


280  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

You  look  back,  and  you  see :  in  the  course  of  thousands 
of  years  out  of  the  number  of  billions  of  people  are 
segregated  dozens  of  men  like  Confucius,  Buddha,  Solon, 
Socrates,  Solomon,  Homer,  Isaiah,  David.  Evidently  they 
occur  but  rarely  among  men,  although  at  that  time  they 
were  not  chosen  from  one  caste  only,  but  from  among  all 
men  ;  apparently  these  true  scholars,  artists,  producers  of 
spiritual  food,  are  rare,  and  humanity  has  had  good  reason 
to  value  them  so  highly.  Now  it  turns  out  that  all  these 
past  great  actors  of  science  and  of  art  are  no  longer  of 
any  use  to  us.  Now  the  scientific  and  artistic  actors  may, 
according  to  the  law  of  the  division  of  labour,  be  produced 
by  machine  work,  and  we  in  one  decade  can  produce  more 
great  men  of  science  and  of  art  than  were  born  among  all 
men  since  the  creation  of  the  world. 

Now  there  is  a  guild  of  scholars  and  of  artists,  and  they 
manufacture  in  an  improved  manner  all  that  spiritual  food 
which  humanity  needs. 

And  they  have  produced  such  a  lot  of  it,  that  there  is 
no  need  even  of  mentioning  all  the  ancient  and  even  all 
the  more  modern  men  of  genius,  —  for  all  that  was  the 
activity  of  the  theological  and  the  metaphysical  periods ; 
all  that  has  to  be  wiped  out ;  the  real  rational  activity 
began  only  fifty  years  ago.  And  in  these  fifty  years  we 
have  manufactured  such  a  lot  of  great  men  that  there  are 
more  of  them  in  one  German  university  than  there  were 
before  in  the  whole  world ;  and  we  have  produced  such  a 
mass  of  sciences,  —  luckily  they  are  easily  produced  (all 
you  have  to  do  is  to  add  to  a  Greek  appellation  the  word 
"  logy,"  and  to  arrange  matters  according  to  given  speci- 
fications, and  the  science  is  all  fixed),  —  that  one  man  not 
only  cannot  know  them,  but  cannot  even  remember  the 
names  of  all  the  existing  sciences,  —  the  names  alone 
w^ould  form  a  stout  dictionary,  and  they  produce  new 
sciences  every  day. 

They  have  produced  a  lot  of  them,  in  the  way  in  which 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  281 

a  Finnish  teacher  taught  the  children  of  a  proprietor  to 
talk  Finnish  instead  of  French.  They  have  taught  us 
beautifully  ;  but  the  one  trouble  is  that  none  but  us  under- 
stand a  thing  about  it,  and  that  the  others  consider  all  this 
to  be  useless  bosh. 

However,  there  is  an  explanation  for  all  that :  the 
people  do  not  understand  the  whole  usefulness  of  the 
scientific  science,  because  they  are  under  the  influence 
of  the  theological  period  of  knowledge,  of  that  stupid 
period  when  the  whole  nation  of  the  Jews,  and  of  the 
Chinese,  and  of  the  Hindoos,  and  of  the  Greeks,  under- 
stood everything  which  their  great  teachers  told  them. 

But  no  matter  what  the  cause  of  it  may  be,  the  point 
is  that  the  sciences  and  the  arts  have  always  existed  with 
humanity,  and  that,  when  they  actually  existed,  they  were 
necessary  and  comprehensible  to  all  men. 

We  are  doing  things  which  we  call  sciences  ojid  arts, 
and  it  turns  out  that  what  we  do  we  have  no  right  to  call 
sciences  and  arts. 


XXXVII. 

"  But  you  are  only  giving  a  different,  more  narrow 
definition  of  science  and  of  art,  which  is  not  in  conformity 
with  science,"  I  am  told,  "  but  this  does  not  exclude 
them,  for  there  is  still  left  the  scieutific  and  the  artis- 
tic activity  of  a  Galileo,  Bruno,  Homer,  Michelangelo,  Beet- 
hoven, Wagner,  and  all  the  scholars  and  artists  of  lesser 
magnitudes,  who  have  devoted  all  their  lives  to  the  service 
of  science  and  of  art." 

This  they  generally  say  in  their  attempt  to  establish 
the  succession,  which  they  in  other  cases  deny,  between 
the  activity  of  the  former  scholars  and  artists  and  the 
present,  and  also  in  their  attempt  at  forgetting  that 
special,  new  principle  of  the  division  of  labour  on  the 
basis  of  which  science  and  the  arts  now  occupy  their 
privileged  position. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  impossible  to  establish  a  succes- 
sion between  the  present  and  the  former  representative 
men ;  as  the  holy  life  of  the  -first  Christians  has  nothing 
in  common  with  the  life  of  the  Popes,  so  the  activity  of 
a  Galileo,  a  Shakespeare,  a  Beethoven,  has  nothing  in 
common  with  the  activity  of  a  Tyndal,  a  Hugo,  a  Wagner. 
As  the  holy  fathers  wovild  have  rejected  any  kinship  with 
the  Popes,  so  the  ancient  men  of  science  would  have 
rejected  any  kinsliip  with  the  men  of  the  present. 

In  the  second  place,  thanks  to  the  meaning  which  the 
sciences  and  arts  now  ascribe  to  themselves,  we  have  a 
very  clear  standard,  given  by  science  itself,  by  means  of 
which  we  are  able  to  determine  their  correspondence 
or  lack  of  correspondence,  to  their  purpose ;  and  thus  we 

282 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  283 

are  able,  not  boldly,  but  by  the  given  standard,  to  deter- 
mine whether  the  activity  vehich  calls  itself  science  and 
art  has  any  grounds,  or  not,  to  call  itself  by  that  name. 

Wheu  the  Egyptian  or  Greek  priests  produced  their 
mysteries  which  no  one  understood,  and  said  of  these  mys- 
teries that  in  them  lay  all  science  and  art,  I  was  not  able 
on  the  basis  of  a  benetit  conferred  by  them  on  the  people 
to  verify  the  reality  of  their  science,  because  science, 
according  to  their  assertion,  was  supernatural ;  but  now 
we  all  have  a  very  clear  and  simple  standard,  which 
excludes  the  supernatural  :  science  and  art  promise  to  do 
the  brain  activity  of  humanity  for  the  good  of  society 
or  of  all  humanity.  And  so  we  have  the  right  to  call 
only  such  activity  science  and  art  as  will  have  this  aim 
and  will  attain  it. 

And  so,  no  matter  what  the  scholars  and  artists  may 
call  themselves,  who  invent  the  theory  of  criminal,  polit- 
ical, and  international  rights,  who  invent  new  guns  and 
explosives,  who  compose  salacious  operas  and  operettas, 
or  just  as  salacious  novels,  we  have  no  right  to  call  all 
this  activity  an  activity  of  science  and  of  art,  since  this 
activity  has  not  for  its  aim  the  good  of  societies  or  of 
humanity,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  directed  to  the  harm 
of  men.  All  this  is,  consequently,  neither  science  nor 
art.  Similarly,  no  matter  what  the  scholars  may  call 
themselves,  who  in  the  simplicity  of  their  hearts  are 
all  their  lives  busy  investigating  microscopic  animals  and 
telescopic  and  spectral  phenomena,  or  what  the  artists 
may  call  themselves,  who,  after  a  careful  study  of  the 
monuments  of  antiquity,  are  busy  preparing  historical 
novels,  pictures,  symphonies,  and  pretty  verses,  —  all  these 
men,  in  spite  of  their  zeal,  cannot,  according  to  the  sci- 
entific definition  itself,  be  called  men  of  science  and  of 
art,  in  the  first  place,  because  their  activity  of  science 
for  the  sake  of  science,  and  of  art  for  the  sake  of  art,  has 
not  the  good  for  its  aim  ;  and  in  the  second  place,  because 


284  WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO    THEN? 

we  do  not  see  the  consequences  of  this  activity  for  the 
good  of  society  and  of  humanity.  But  the  fact  that  from 
their  activity  there  sometimes  accrues  something  useful 
and  agreeable  for  certain  people  does  by  no  means  give 
us  the  right,  again  according  to  their  own  scientific 
definition,  to  regard  them  as  men  of  science  and  of  art. 

Similarly,  no  matter  what  men  may  call  themselves 
who  invent  applications  of  electricity  to  lighting,  heating, 
and  motion,  or  new  chemical  combinations,  which  produce 
dynamite  or  beautiful  dyes ;  or  who  play  correctly  Beet- 
hoven's symphonies ;  or  who  act,  or  paint  beautiful  por- 
traits, genre  pictures,  landscapes  ;  or  who  write  interesting 
novels,  the  aim  of  which  is  only  to  offer  diversion  to  the 
rich  in  their  ennui,  —  the  activity  of  these  men  cannot 
be  called  science  or  art,  because  it  is  not  directed,  like 
the  brain  activity  in  the  organism,  toward  the  good  of  the 
whole,  but  is  guided  only  by  personal  advantage,  privi- 
leges, money,  received  for  the  invention  and  production 
of  so-called  art,  and  so  can  in  no  way  be  separated  from 
any  other  selfish,  personal  activity  which  adds  pleasure 
to  life,  such  as  are  the  activities  of  restaurant-keepers, 
and  jockeys,  and  modistes,  and  prostitutes,  and  so  forth. 
The  activities  of  any  of  these  do  not  fit  in  with  the  defini- 
tion of  science  and  of  art,  which  on  the  basis  of  the 
division  of  labour  promise  to  serve  the  good  of  all  hu- 
manity or  of  society. 

The  definition  of  science  and  of  art,  as  made  by  science, 
is  quite  correct,  but  unfortunately  the  activity  of  modem 
sciences  and  arts  does  not  fit  in  with  it.  Some  of  them 
do  outright  what  is  harmful,  others  what  is  useless,  and 
others  again  what  is  insignificant,  and  good  only  for  the 
rich. 

All  of  them  may,  indeed,  be  good  men,  but  they  do  not 
fulfil  what,  according  to  their  own  definition,  they  under- 
took to  do,  and  so  they  have  as  little  right  to  regard 
themselves  as   men   of  science   and  of  art  as  have  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  285 

modern  clergy  who,  by  not  fulfilling  the  obligations  taken 
upon  themselves,  have  lost  the  right  to  recognize  them- 
selves as  carriers  and  teachers  of  divine  truth. 

And  it  is  comprehensible  why  the  men  of  modern 
science  and  art  have  not  fulfilled,  and  cannot  fulfil,  their 
calHng.  They  do  not  fulfil  it,  because  of  theii-  obligations 
they  have  made  rights. 

The  scientific  and  artistic  activity,  in  its  real  meaning, 
is  fruitful  only  when  it  knows  no  rights,  but  only  obliga- 
tions. It  is  only  because  it  is  always  such,  —  because  its 
property  is  to  be  self-sacrificing,  —  that  humanity  values 
it  so  highly. 

If  men  are  really  called  to  serve  others  by  means  of 
spiritual  labour,  they  will  always  suffer  in  fulfilling  this 
ministration,  because  only  in  suffering,  as  in  childbirth,  is 
the  spiritual  world  born. 

Self-renunciation  and  suffering  will  be  the  share  of  the 
thinker  and  the  artist,  because  his  aim  is  the  good  of  men. 
Men  are  unhappy  :  they  suffer,  they  perish.  There  is  no 
time  for  waiting  and  taking  things  coolly. 

The  thinker  and  the  artist  will  never  sit  on  Olympian 
heights,  as  we  are  accustomed  to  think  ;  he  will  always, 
eternally,  be  agitated  and  disturbed ;  he  might  have 
solved  and  uttered  that  which  would  give  the  good  to 
men  and  would  free  them  from  suffering,  but  he  did  not 
solve  and  utter  this,  and  to-morrow  it  may  be  too  late : 
he  may  be  dead. 

Not  he  will  be  a  thinker  and  an  artist  who  is  educated 
in  an  establishment  where  they  make  a  scholar  and  an 
artist  (what  they  really  make  there  is  a  ruiner  of  science 
and  of  art),  and  receives  a  diploma  and  a  competency, 
but  he  who  would  be  glad  to  refrain  from  thinking  and 
expressing  what  is  implanted  in  his  soul,  and  yet  is  un- 
able to  refrain  from  doing  that  toward  which  he  is  drawn 
by  two  insuperable  forces,  —  by  his  inner  necessity  and 
by  the  demands  of  men. 


286  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

There  is  no  such  a  thing  as  a  smooth,  easy-going,  and 
self-satisfied  thinker  and  artist. 

The  spiritual  activity  and  its  expression,  which  are 
indeed  necessary  for  others,  are  man's  most  grievous  call- 
ing, his  cross,  as  it  is  expressed  in  the  Gospel.  The  only 
undoubted  sign  of  the  presence  of  the  calling  is  self- 
renunciation,  self-sacrifice  for  the  purpose  of  manifesting 
the  force  which  is  implanted  in  man  for  the  benefit  of 
other  men. 

It  is  possible  to  teach  how  many  bugs  there  are  in  the 
world,  and  to  observe  the  spots  in  the  sun,  and  to  write 
novels  or  an  opera,  without  experiencing  any  suffering  ; 
but  it  is  impossible  without  renunciation  to  teach  peo- 
ple their  good,  which  is  all  only  in  self-renunciation  and 
serving  others,  and  strongly  to  express  this  teaching. 

There  was  a  church  so  long  as  the  teachers  endured  and 
suffered,  but  the  moment  they  began  to  grow  fat  their 
teaching  activity  came  to  an  end. 

"  There  were  golden  priests  and  wooden  bowls,  now  the 
bowls  have  become  of  gold,  and  the  priests  are  wooden," 
say  the  people. 

There  was  good  reason  why  Christ  died  on  the  cross, 
and  good  reason  why  the  sacrifice  of  suffering  conquers 
everything. 

But  our  men,  and  science  and  art,  are  made  secure  and 
have  diplomas,  and  all  the  care  they  have  is  how  to  make 
themselves  more  secure  still,  that  is,  how  to  make  im- 
possible the  ministration  to  men. 

True  science  and  true  art  have  two  undoubted  signs, 
—  the  first,  an  inward  sign,  is  this,  that  the  servant  of 
science  and  of  art  will  carry  out  his  calHng  not  for  his 
advantage,  but  with  self-renunciation,  and  the  second,  an 
external  one,  is  this,  that  its  productions  are  comprehen- 
sible to  all  men  whose  good  he  has  in  view. 

No  matter  in  what  men  may  take  their  purpose  and 
good  to  lie,  science  will  be  the  teaching  of  this  purpose 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  287 

and  good,  and  art  —  the  expression  of  this  teaching.  The 
laws  of  Solon  and  of  Confucius  are  science ;  the  teaching 
of  Moses  and  of  Christ  are  science;  the  buildings  in 
Athens,  David's  psalms,  the  masses,  are  art ;  but  the  study 
of  the  bodies  in  the  fourth  dimension  and  of  the  tables  of 
chemical  combinations,  and  so  forth,  has  never  been  and 
never  will  be  science.  The  place  of  true  science  and  of 
the  arts  is  in  modern  times  taken  by  theology  and  the 
juridical  sciences ;  the  place  of  true  art  is  taken  by  eccle- 
siastic and  governmental  ceremonies,  in  which  all  alike 
do  not  believe,  and  on  which  all  alike  fail  to  look  seri- 
ously ;  but  that  which  with  us  is  called  science  and  art  is 
the  product  of  an  idle  mind  and  of  idle  feehug,  having  for 
its  aim  the  tickling  of  just  such  idle  minds  and  feelings, 
incomprehensible  and  meaningless  for  the  masses,  because 
it  has  not  their  good  in  view. 

As  far  back  as  we  know  the  life  of  men,  we  always  and 
everywhere  find  the  reigning  teaching,  which  falsely  calls 
itself  science  and  which  does  not  disclose  the  meaning  of 
life  to  men,  but  obscures  it.  Thus  it  was  with  the  Egyp- 
tians, with  the  Hindoos,  with  the  Chinese,  and  partly  with 
the  Greeks  (sophists),  then  with  the  mystics,  gnostics, 
Cabalists ;  in  the  Middle  Ages  with  the  theologians, 
scholastics,  alchemists,  and  so  on  up  to  our  time. 

What  a  special  piece  of  fortune  it  is  for  us  to  be  living 
in  such  a  particular  time  when  that  mental  activity  which 
calls  itself  science  is  not  only  not  in  error,  but  also,  as  we 
are  assured,  in  an  unusually  flourishing  state !  Is  not 
this  special  piece  of  good  fortune  due  to  this,  that  man 
cannot  and  does  not  wish  to  see  his  monstrousness  ?  Why 
is  there  nothing  left  of  the  sciences  of  the  theologians 
and  Cabalists  but  words,  while  we  are  so  fortunate  ? 

The  signs  are  certainly  the  same  :  there  is  the  same 
self-contentment  and  blind  assurance  that  we,  and  nobody 
else,  are  on  the  right  path,  and  that  the  real  thing  begins 
with  us  only.     There  is  the  same  expectation  that  very, 


288  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

very  shortly  we  shall  discover  something  unusual,  and  the 
same  chief  sign  which  betrays  our  error,  —  our  whole 
wisdom  is  left  with  us,  and  the  masses  do  not  understand, 
nor  receive,  nor  need  it.  Our  situation  is  very  hard,  but 
why  should  we  not  look  straight  at  it  ? 

It  is  time  to  bethink  and  overhaul  ourselves. 

We  are  certainly  nothing  but  scribes  and  Pharisees, 
who  have  seated  ourselves  on  Moses'  seat,  and  who  have 
taken  the  keys  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  who 
ourselves  do  not  enter  and  do  not  admit  others.  We,  the 
priests  of  science  and  of  art,  are  the  most  wretched  de- 
ceivers, who  have  a  great  deal  less  right  to  our  situation 
than  the  most  cunning  and  corrupt  of  priests.  We  have 
not  the  slightest  justification  for  our  privileged  condition  : 
we  have  seized  this  place  through  rascahty,  and  we  hold 
it  through  deception. 

The  priests,  the  clergy,  ours  or  the  Catholic,  no  matter 
how  corrupt  they  have  been,  have  had  a  right  to  their 
position,  —  they  have  been  saying  that  they  teach  men 
life  and  salvation.  But  we  have  undermined  the  clergy 
and  have  proved  to  people  that  it  deceives  them,  and 
have  taken  its  place ;  we  do  not  teach  hfe  to  men, 
and  even  recognize  that  there  is  no  need  of  learning  this ; 
we  suck  up  the  juices  of  the  masses  and  for  this  we  teach 
our  children  the  same  Talmud,  —  Greek  and  Latin  gram- 
mar, —  in  order  that  they  may  be  able  to  continue  the 
same  life  of  a  parasite  which  we  are  leading. 

We  say  that  there  used  to  be  castes,  but  that  there  are 
none  now.  But  what  does  this  mean,  that  some  people 
and  their  children  work,  while  other  people  and  their 
children  do  not  work  ?  Take  a  Hindoo,  who  does  not 
know  our  language,  and  show  him  the  life  of  several 
generations  in  Europe  and  in  Eussia,  and  he  will  recog- 
nize the  same  two  chief,  distinct  castes  of  workers  and 
non-workers  which  he  has  in  his  own  country.  As  in  his 
country,  the  right  not  to  work  is  given  to  us  by  a  special 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  289 

sanctification  which  we  call  science  and  art,  or,  in  general, 
education. 

It  is  this  education  and  all  the  perversion  of  the  mind, 
which  is  connected  with  it,  that  has  brought  us  to  that 
remarkable  madness  in  consequence  of  which  we  do  not 
see  what  is  so  clear  and  unquestionable. 

We  devour  the  human  lives  of  our  brothers  and  con- 
sider ourselves  Christian,  humane,  cultured,  and  perfectly 
righteous  men. 


XXXVIII 

So  what  is  to  be  done  ?     What  shall  we  do  then  ? 

This  question,  which  includes  the  recognition  that  our 
life  is  bad  and  irregular,  and,  at  the  same  time,  as  it  were, 
the  assertion  that  it  is  impossible  to  change  all  this,  I 
have  heard  on  all  sides,  and  so  I  have  chosen  this  ques- 
tion for  the  title  of  this  whole  writing. 

I  have  described  my  sufferings,  my  searchings,  and  my 
solutions  of  tiiis  question.  I  am  the  same  kind  of  a  man 
as  all  the  rest,  and  if  I  in  any  way  differ  from  the 
average  man  of  our  circle,  I  differ  mainly  in  this,  that  I 
have  more  than  the  average  man  served  the  false  teach- 
ing of  the  world  and  have  been  in  collusion  with  it,  have 
received  more  applause  from  the  people  of  the  reigning 
teaching,  and  so  have  more  than  others  become  corrupted 
and  strayed  from  my  path. 

And  so  I  think  that  the  solution  of  the  question  which 
I  have  found  for  mvself  will  also  be  good  for  all  sincere 
people  who  put  the  same  question  to  themselves.  First 
of  all,  in  reply  to  the  question,  "  What  to  do  ? "  I  an- 
swered myself :  "  iSTot  to  lie  to  others,  nor  to  oneself ; 
not  to  be  afraid  of  the  truth,  no  matter  where  it  may 
take  us."  We  all  know  what  it  means  to  lie  to  people, 
and  yet  we  never  stop  lying  from  morning  until  night : 
"  Not  at  home,"  when  I  am  at  home  ;  "  Very  glad,"  when 
I  am  not  at  all  glad  ;  "  Most  respectfully,"  when  I  do  not 
at  all  respect ;  "  I  have  no  money,"  when  I  have  it,  and 
so  forth.  We  consider  a  lie  to  people,  especially  a  lie  of 
a  certain  kind,  a  bad  thing,  but  we  are  not  afraid  of  lying 

to  ourselves ;  and  yet  the  worst,  most  direct,  most  decep- 

290 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  291 

tive  lie  to  other  people  is  nothing  in  its  consequences  in 
comparison  with  the  lie  to  ourselves,  on  which  we  build 
our  life. 

It  is  this  lie  which  we  must  not  tell,  in  order  that  we 
may  be  able  to  answer  the  question,  "  What  to  do  ? " 

How  can  I  answer  this  question,  when  everything  I 
do,  my  whole  life,  is  based  on  a  lie,  and  I  carefully  give 
out  this  lie  to  others  and  to  myself  as  the  truth  ?  Not  to 
lie  in  this  sense  means  not  to  be  afraid  of  the  truth,  not 
to  invent  any  subterfuges,  and  not  to  accept  those  invented 
by  others  for  the  purpose  of  concealing  from  ourselves  the 
deductions  of  reason  and  of  conscience ;  not  to  be  afraid 
of  disagreeing  from  ail  those  around  us,  and  to  remain  all 
alone  with  reason  and  conscience ;  not  to  be  afraid  of  the 
proposition  to  which  truth  will  lead  us,  being  fully  con- 
vinced that  the  proposition  to  which  truth  and  conscience 
will  lead  as,  no  matter  how  strange  it  may  be,  cannot  be 
worse  than  the  one  which  is  based  on  the  lie.  Not  to  lie 
in  our  condition  of  privileged  people  of  the  mental  labour 
means  not  to  be  afraid  of  squaring  up  accounts.  "  May 
be  I  am  so  much  in  arrears  that  I  shall  never  balance  my 
accounts ; "  but,  no  matter  how  much  it  may  be,  it  is 
better  than  not  to  cast  the  accounts  at  all ;  no  matter 
how  far  we  may  have  strayed  on  the  false  path,  it  is 
better  for  us  than  to  continue  to  walk  on  the  false  path. 
Lying  to  others  is  only  inexpedient. 

Every  affair  is  more  directly  and  more  briefly  solved  by 
truth  than  by  lies.  Lying  to  others  only  complicates 
matters  and  delays  the  solution ;  but  a  lie  to  oneself, 
given  out  as  a  truth,  ruins  a  man's  whole  life. 

If  a  man,  having  strayed  on  a  false  path,  recognizes  it 
as  the  true  one,  every  step  of  his  on  his  path  removes 
him  from  his  goal ;  if  a  man,  v/ho  for  a  long  time  walks 
on  this  false  path,  di\'ines  himself  or  is  told  that  this  is  a 
false  path,  and  is  frightened  at  the  idea  of  how  far  he  has 
strayed  to  one  side,  and  tries  to  assure  himself  that  he 


292  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

will  in  some  way  come  out  on  the  road,  he  certainly 
never  will.  If  a  man  is  awed  by  truth  and,  seeing  it, 
does  not  acknowledge  it,  accepts  the  he  as  truth,  he  will 
never  know  what  he  has  to  do. 

We,  not  only  the  rich,  but  also  the  privileged,  the 
so-called  cultured  men,  have  strayed  so  far  on  the  false 
path  that  we  need  great  determination  or  very  great 
suffering  on  the  false  path  in  order  to  regain  our  senses 
and  recognize  the  lie  by  which  we  live. 

I  saw  the  lie  of  our  life,  thanks  to  those  sufferings  to 
which  the  false  path  brought  me ;  and  having  recognized 
the  falseness  of  the  path  on  which  I  was  standing,  I 
had  the  courage,  at  first  only  mentally,  to  go  whither 
reason  and  conscience  took  me,  without  reflection  as  to 
where  they  would  take  me  to.  I  was  rewarded  for  this 
courage.  All  the  complex,  dissociated,  confused,  mean- 
ingless phenomena  of  life  which  surrounded  me  suddenly 
became  clear  to  me,  and  my  position  amidst  these  phe- 
nomena, strange  and  oppressive  to  me  before,  suddenly 
became  natural  and  light.  And  in  this  new  position  my 
activity  was  quite  precisely  defined :  it  was  by  no  means 
the  one  which  had  presented  itself  to  me  before,  but  a 
new,  much  calmer,  more  lovable,  and  more  joyous  activity. 
What  formerly  frightened  me  now  began  to  attract  me. 

And  so  I  think  that  he  who  sincerely  asks  himself, 
"  What  to  do  ? "  and,  answering  this  question,  does  not 
lie  to  himself,  but  proceeds  whither  his  reason  will  lead 
him,  has  already  solved  the  question.  If  only  he  shall 
not  lie  to  himseK,  he  will  find  where,  how,  and  what  to 
do.  The  one  thing  that  can  keep  him  from  finding  a  way 
out  is  the  false  high  opinion  which  he  has  of  his  con- 
dition. So  it  was  with  me,  and  so  another  answer  to 
the  question,  "  What  to  do  ? "  resulting  from  the  first,  con- 
sisted for  me  in  repenting  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word, 
that  is,  in  completely  changing  the  valuation  of  my  con- 
dition and  of  my  activity ;  in  recognizing,  instead  of  the 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  293 

usefulness  and  seriousness  of  my  activity,  its  harm  and 
triviality ;  in  recognizing,  instead  of  my  education,  my 
ignorance;  in  recognizing,  instead  of  my  goodness  and 
morality,  my  immorality  and  cruelty ;  in  recognizing, 
instead  of  my  exaltation,  my  baseness. 

I  say  that,  iu  addition  to  not  lying  to  myself,  I  had  to 
repent  iu  particular  because,  although  one  thing  results 
from  another,  the  false  conception  of  my  high  significance 
was  so  welded  with  me  that  so  long  as  I  did  not  sincerely 
repent,  and  did  not  renounce  the  false  valuation  which  I 
had  made  of  myself,  I  did  not  see  the  greater  part  of  the 
lie  which  I  was  telling  to  myself.  Only  when  I  repented, 
that  is,  stopped  looking  upon  myself  as  a  special  man, 
and  considered  myself  as  a  man  like  anybody  else,  my 
path  became  clear  to  me. 

Before  that  I  had  been  uuable  to  answer  the  question, 
"  What  to  do  ? "  because  I  put  the  question  itself  incor- 
rectly. So  long  as  I  did  not  repent,  I  put  the  question 
like  this :  "  What  activity  shall  be  chosen  by  me,  a  man 
in  possession  of  the  culture  and  of  the  talents  which  I 
have  acquired  ?  How  can  I  with  this  culture  and  these 
talents  repay  what  I  have  been  takiug  from  the  masses  ?  " 

This  question  was  incorrectly  put,  because  it  included 
the  false  representation  that  I  was  not  just  such  a  man, 
but  a  special  kind  of  a  man,  called  to  serve  the  masses 
with  those  talents  and  that  culture  which  I  had  acquired 
in  a  practice  of  forty  years.  I  used  to  put  the  ques- 
tion to  myself,  but  in  reality  answered  it  by  determining 
in  advance  the  kind  of  agreeable  activity  with  which  I 
was  called  to  serve  men.  What  I  really  asked  myself  was 
this  :  "  How  can  I,  such  a  fine  author,  who  have  acquired 
so  much  knowledge  and  so  many  talents,  use  them  for 
the  benefit  of  men  ? "  But  the  question  ought  to  have 
been  put  as  it  stood  for  a  learned  rabbi  who  had  finished 
his  course  in  the  Talmud  and  had  studied  the  number  of 
letters  in  all  the  sacred  writings  and  all  the  intricacies 


294  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

of  his  science.  The  question,  as  for  the  rabbi,  so  also  for 
me  ought  to  have  stood  as  follows :  What  must  I,  who, 
through  the  misfortune  of  my  conditions,  have  passed 
my  best  years  of  study  in  acquiring  the  French  language, 
the  playing  of  the  piano,  grammar,  geography,  juridical 
sciences,  verses,  novels,  philosophical  theories,  and  mili- 
tary exercises,  instead  of  becoming  accustomed  to  work,  — 
what  must  I,  who  have  passed  the  best  years  of  my  life 
in  idle  occupations  which  corrupt  the  soul,  do,  in  spite  of 
these  unfortunate  conditions  of  the  past,  in  order  to  pay 
back  to  those  people  who  have  fed  and  clothed  me  and 
even  now  continue  to  feed  and  clothe  me  ?  If  the  ques- 
tion had  stood  before  me  as  it  now  stands  before  me, 
after  I  have  repented,  namely,  what  I,  such  a  corrupt 
man,  must  do,  the  answer  would  have  been  easy :  I  must 
first  of  all  try  to  earn  an  honest  living,  that  is,  to  learn 
how  not  to  hve  by  sitting  on  the  backs  of  others  and, 
while  learning  it  and  having  learned  it,  upon  every  occa- 
sion to  be  useful  to  people  with  my  hands,  and  feet,  and 
brain,  and  heart,  and  with  all  that  to  which  the  masses 
lay  any  claim. 

And  so  I  say  that  for  a  man  of  our  circle  it  is  not 
enough  to  refrain  from  lying  to  others  and  to  himself :  he 
must  also  repent,  —  scrape  off  the  pride  which  is  ingrained 
in  us  through  our  education,  refinement,  and  talents, 
—  and  recognize  himself  not  as  a  benefactor  of  the 
masses,  a  representative  man  who  does  not  refuse  to  share 
his  useful  acquisitions  with  the  masses,  but  as  an  abso- 
lutely guilty,  spoilt,  and  useless  man  who  desires  to  mend 
and  not  exactly  to  benefit  the  masses,  but  to  stop  offend- 
ing and  insulting  them. 

I  frequently  hear  the  questions  of  good  young  men  who 
sympathize  with  the  negative  part  of  my  writings  and  ask  : 
"  Well,  so  what  must  I  do  ?  What  must  I  do,  having 
graduated  from  the  university  or  from  another  institution, 
in  order  that  I  may  be  useful  ? " 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  295 

The  young  people  ask  this  question,  but  in  the  depth 
of  their  hearts  they  have  long  ago  decided  that  the  educa- 
tion which  they  have  received  is  their  great  superiority, 
and  that  they  wish  to  serve  the  masses  even  by  their  su- 
periority ;  and  so  there  is  one  thing  which  they  certainly 
will  not  do,  and  that  is,  sincerely,  honestly,  and  critically 
inspect  that  which  they  call  their  education,  and  ask 
themselves  whether  that  which  they  call  education  repre- 
sents good  or  bad  qualities.  If  they  do  that,  they  will 
inevitably  be  led  to  the  necessity  of  renouncing  their 
education,  and  to  the  necessity  of  beginning  to  study 
anew,  and  that  is  the  one  necessary  thing. 

They  are  absolutely  unable  to  solve  the  question  as  to 
what  to  do,  because  it  is  not  put  as  it  ought  to  be  put. 

The  question  ought  to  stand  like  this :  "  How  must  I, 
a  helpless,  useless  man,  who,  through  the  misfortune  of 
my  conditions,  have  wasted  the  best  years  of  study  in  the 
acquisition  of  the  scientific  Talmud,  which  corrupts  body 
and  soul,  correct  this  error  and  learn  to  serve  people  ? " 
But  it  stands  with  them  like  this :  "  How  can  I,  a  man 
who  has  acquired  so  many  fine  sciences,  be  useful  to  men 
by  means  of  these  fine  sciences  ? "  And  so  a  man  will 
never  answer  the  question,  "  What  to  do  ?  "  until  he  stops 
lying  to  himself,  and  repents.  And  the  repentance  is  not 
terrible,  just  as  truth  is  not  terrible,  and  it  is  just  as  joy- 
ous and  as  fruitful.  One  needs  only  to  accept  truth 
as  a  whole  and  repent  in  full,  in  order  to  comprehend  that 
no  one  has,  nor  can  have,  any  rights,  pri\41eges,  and  pre- 
rogatives in  matters  of  life,  and  that  there  is  no  end  and 
no  limit  to  duties,  and  that  man's  first  unquestionable 
duty  is  to  take  part  in  the  struggle  with  Nature  for  his 
own  life  and  for  that  of  other  men. 

It  is  this  consciousness  of  man's  duty  which  constitutes 
the  essence  of  the  third  answer  to  the  question,  "  What 
to  do  ? " 

I  tried  not  to  lie  to  myself ;  I  tried  to  boil  away  what 


296  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

there  was  left  of  the  false  opiniou  as  regards  my  educa- 
tiou  and  talents,  and  to  repent ;  but  a  new  ditiiculty  arose 
on  the  path  of  the  solution  of  the  question,  "  What  to 
do  ? "  There  were  so  many  things  that  it  was  necessary 
to  have  pointed  out  what  it  is  that  I  ought  to  do.  And 
the  answer  to  this  question  was  given  to  me  by  the  sin- 
cere repentance  of  the  evil  in  which  I  was  living.  "  What 
to  do  ?  What  indeed  is  to  be  done  ?  "  all  ask,  and  I,  too, 
asked  myself  so  long  as  I,  under  the  influence  of  the 
high  opinion  of  my  calling,  did  not  see  that  it  was  my 
foremost  and  most  unquestionable  business  to  feed,  clothe, 
warm  myself,  and  tend  on  myself,  and  in  the  same  things 
to  serve  others,  because  ever  since  the  world  has  existed 
this  has  been  the  first  and  most  unquestionable  duty  of 
every  man. 

In  this  one  affair  man  receives,  if  he  shares  it,  a  full 
gratification  of  the  bodily  and  the  spiritual  demands  of 
his  nature :  to  feed,  clothe,  guard  oneself  and  one's 
family  is  a  gratification  of  a  bodily  demand,  and  to  do 
the  same  for  other  people  is  a  gratification  of  a  spiritual 
demand. 

Every  other  activity  of  man  is  lawful  only  when  this 
foremost  necessity  is  satisfied. 

No  matter  in  what  a  man  may  think  his  calling  to  lie, 
whether  in  governing  people,  or  in  defending  his  com- 
patriots, or  in  celebrating  divine  services,  or  in  teaching 
others,  or  in  inventing  means  for  the  increase  of  the 
pleasures  of  life,  or  in  discovering  new  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse, or  in  incarnating  eternal  truths  in  artistic  forms,  — 
a  sensible  man  will  always  find  his  first  and  most  un- 
questionable duty  to  lie  in  his  participation  in  the  struggle 
with  Nature,  for  the  purpose  of  supporting  his  own  life 
and  that  of  other  men.  This  duty  will  always  be  the 
first,  if  for  no  other  reason  because  people  need  their  life 
most,  and  so,  in  order  to  defend  and  instruct  men  and 
make  their  lives  most  agreeable,  it  is  necessary  to  pre- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  297 

serve  life  itself,  whereas  my  non-participation  in  the 
struggle,  the  absorption  of  other  men's  labours,  is  a 
destruction  of  other  men's  lives. 

And  so  it  is  impossible  and  irrational  to  serve  the  lives 
of  men  by  destroying  them. 

The  duty  of  the  struggle  with  Nature  for  the  purpose 
of  obtaining  the  means  of  subsistence  will  always  be  the 
first  and  most  unquestionable  of  all  duties,  because  it  is 
a  law  of  life,  a  departure  from  which  draws  after  it  an 
inevitable  punishment,  —  the  destruction  of  either  the 
bodily  or  the  rational  hfe  of  man.  If  a  man,  living  alone, 
frees  himself  from  the  duty  of  the  struggle  with  Nature, 
he  at  once  inflicts  a  punishment  on  liimself  in  that  his 
body  perishes.  But  if  a  man  frees  himself  from  this 
duty,  causing  others  to  fulfil  it,  while  he  ruins  their  lives, 
he  at  once  inflicts  upon  himself  a  punishment  by  destroy- 
ing his  rational  life,  that  is,  the  hfe  which  has  a  rational 
meaning. 

I  was  so  corrupted  by  my  past  life,  and  this  first  and 
unquestionable  law  of  God,  or  of  Nature,  has  been  so 
concealed  in  our  society,  that  the  execution  of  this  law 
seemed  strange,  terrible,  and  even  shameful  to  me,  as 
though  the  execution  of  an  eternal,  unquestionable  law, 
and  not  a  departure  from  it,  can  be  strange,  terrible,  and 
shameful.  At  first  it  appeared  to  me  that  for  the  per- 
formance of  this  matter  there  was  needed  some  kind  of 
an  appliance,  arrangement,  cooperation  of  those  who 
share  my  view,  consent  of  family,  life  in  the  country ; 
then  it  appeared  rather  awkward  for  me  to  speak  openly 
to  people  and  to  do  such  an  extraordinary  thing  in  our 
manner  of  life  as  manual  labour,  and  I  did  not  know  how 
to  go  about  it. 

But  I  needed  only  to  comprehend  that  it  was  not  some 
exclusive  activity,  such  as  had  to  be  thought  out  and 
arranged,  but  only  a  return  from  a  false  state,  in  which  I 
was,  to  one  that  was  natural,  that  it  was  only  a  correc- 


298  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

tiou  of  a  lie  iu  which  I  was  living,  —  I  needed  only  to 
become  conscious  of  tliis,  in  order  that  all  these  difficulties 
should  be  removed. 

It  was  never  necessary  to  arrange,  adapt,  and  await  the 
consent  of  others,  because,  no  matter  in  what  condition  I 
was,  there  were  always  men  who  fed,  clothed,  and  kept 
warm  not  only  themselves,  but  also  me,  and  under  all 
conditions  1  could  do  that  for  myself  and  for  them,  if  I 
had  enough  time  and  strength  for  it. 

Nor  could  I  experience  any  false  shame  in  my  occupa- 
tion with  a  matter  which  was  unaccustomed  and  surpris- 
ing to  people,  because,  in  not  doing  it,  I  experienced  no 
longer  any  false,  but  real  shame.  When  I  arrived  at  the 
consciousness  of  this  and  at  the  practical  deduction  from 
it,  I  was  fully  rewarded  for  not  having  lost  my  courage 
in  the  presence  of  the  deductions  of  reason  and  for  having 
gone  v/hither  they  led  me. 

When  I  arrived  at  this  practical  deduction,  I  was 
startled  by  the  ease  and  simplicity  of  the  solution  of  all 
those  questions  which  before  had  seemed  so  difficult  and 
so  complicated. 

To  the  question  what  to  do  there  appeared  a  most 
indubitable  answer :  "  First  of  all  what  I  myself  need,  — 
my  samovar,  my  stove,  my  water,  my  raiment,  —  every- 
thing which  I  could  do  myself." 

In  reply  to  the  question  as  to  whether  this  would  not 
seem  strange  to  the  people  that  did  that,  it  appeared  that 
the  strangeness  lasted  only  a  week,  after  which  time  it 
would  have  been  strange  if  I  had  returned  to  my  former 
conditions. 

In  reply  to  the  question  whether  it  was  necessary  to 
organize  this  physical  labour,  by  establishing  a  coopera- 
tion in  the  country  on  the  land,  it  turned  out  that  this 
was  not  necessary,  that  labour,  if  it  has  for  its  aim  not 
the  obtaining  of  the  possibility  of  being  idle  and  exploit- 
ing the  labour  of  others,  such  as  is  the  labour  of  those 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  299 

who  acquire  wealth,  but  the  gratification  of  needs, 
naturally  draws  one  from  the  city  to  the  country,  to 
the  land,  where  this  labour  is  most  fruitful  and  most 
joyous. 

There  was  no  need  of  establishing  any  cooperative 
society,  because  a  labouring  man  naturally  joins  the 
existing  cooperation  of  working  people. 

To  the  question  as  to  whether  this  labour  would  not 
absorb  all  my  time  and  deprive  me  of  the  possibility  of 
that  mental  activity  which  I  love,  to  w*hich  I  am  used, 
and  which,  in  moments  of  doubt,  I  consider  not  useless,  I 
received  a  most  unexpected  answer.  The  energy  of  the 
mental  activity  was  strengthened  and  evenly  strength- 
ened, freeing  itself  from  everything  superfluous,  in  pro- 
portion of  the  bodily  tension. 

It  turned  out  that,  by  giving  eight  hours  to  physical 
labour,  —  that  half  of  the  day  which  before  I  had  passed 
in  grievous  efforts  at  struggling  with  ennui,  —  I  had  still 
eight  hours  left,  of  which  I,  according  to  the  conditions, 
needed  only  five  for  mental  labour ;  it  turned  out  that  if 
I,  a  very  prolific  writer,  who  for  nearly  forty  years  had 
done  nothing  but  write,  and  who  had  written  three 
hundred  printed  sheets  [of  sixteen  pages  each],  had  all 
these  forty  years  done  manual  labour  with  all  the  work- 
ing people,  and  had  read  and  studied  for  five  hours  each 
day,  excluding  winter  evenings  and  holidays,  and  had 
written  only  on  hohdays  at  the  rate  of  two  pages  a  day 
(whereas  I  had  written  as  much  as  a  printed  sheet  a  day), 
I  should  have  written  the  same  three  hundred  sheets  in 
fourteen  years. 

What  turned  out  was  most  astonishing,  —  it  was  a 
very  simple  calculation,  which  a  boy  of  seven  years  may 
do,  and  which  I  had  heretofore  been  unable  to  do.  In  a 
day  there  are  twenty-four  hours ;  we  sleep  eight,  so  there 
are  sixteen  left.  If  a  man  of  any  mental  activity  should 
devote  five  hours  each  day  to  his  activity,  he  would  do 


300       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ? 

an  enormous  amount,  so  what  becomes  of  tlie  remaining 
eleven  hours  ? 

It  turned  out  that  physical  labour  not  only  does  not 
exclude  the  possibility  of  a  mental  activity,  not  only 
improves  its  quality,  but  improves  the  activity  itself  and 
encourages  it. 

As  to  the  question  whether  this  physical  labour  would 
not  deprive  me  of  many  harmless  pleasures  which  are 
proper  to  man,  such  as  the  enjoyments  of  the  arts,  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge,  the  communion  with  men,  and 
in  general  the  happiness  of  life,  the  very  opposite  turned 
out  to  be  the  case :  the  tenser  the  work  was,  the  more  it 
approached  what  is  considered  rough  agricultural  labour, 
the  more  enjoyments  and  knowledge  did  1  acquire,  and  the 
closer  and  more  amicable  was  my  communion  with  men, 
and  the  more  happiness  of  life  did  I  obtain. 

To  the  question  (so  frequently  heard  by  me  from  not 
very  sincere  people)  as  to  what  result  there  may  be  frou' 
such  an  insignificant  drop  in  the  ocean,  —  the  participa- 
tion of  my  personal  physical  labour  in  the  ocean  of  labour 
absorbed  by  me,  —  the  same  astonishing  and  unexpected 
answer  was  received. 

It  turned  out  that  I  needed  only  to  make  physical 
labour  a  habitual  condition  of  my  life,  in  order  that  the 
majority  of  my  false  and  expensive  habits  and  needs  dur- 
ing my  physical  idleness  should  without  the  least  effort 
on  my  part  naturally  fall  away  from  me.  To  say  nothing 
of  my  habit  of  changing  day  into  night  and  vice  versa, 
and  not  to  mention  the  bed,  the  garments,  the  conven- 
tional cleanliness,  which  with  the  physical  labour  are 
simply  impossible  and  embarrassing,  the  food,  the  need  of 
the  quality  of  the  food,  was  completely  changed.  Instead 
of  sweet,  fat,  refined,  complicated,  seasoned  food,  for  which 
I  had  had  a  hankering  before,  I  began  to  feel  the  need  of 
the  simplest  kind  of  food,  which  I  enjoyed  most,  such  as 
cabbage  soup,  porridge,  black  bread,  unsweetened  tea. 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  301 

Thus,  not  to  speak  of  the  simple  example  of  those 
labouring  men  with  whom  I  came  into  contact  and  who 
were  contented  with  little,  the  needs  themselves  imper- 
ceptibly changed  in  consequence  of  the  life  of  labour,  so 
that  my  drop  of  physical  labour,  in  proportion  as  I  became 
accustomed  to  it  and  acquired  the  methods  of  work,  be- 
came more  perceptible ;  in  proportion  as  my  labour  became 
more  fruitful,  my  demands  of  other  people's  labour  be- 
came less  and  less,  and  life  naturally,  without  effort  and 
without  privations,  approached  that  simple  hfe  of  which 
I  could  not  even  have  dreamed  without  fulfilling  the  law 
of  labour.  It  turned  out  that  my  most  expensive  demands 
on  life,  namely,  the  demands  of  vanity  and  of  diversion 
from  ennui,  were  directly  due  to  an  idle  life. 

With  physical  labour  there  was  no  room  for  vanity, 
and  there  was  no  need  of  di versions,  since  my  time  was 
pleasantly  occupied,  and,  after  fatigue,  a  simple  rest  at 
the  tea,  over  a  book,  in  a  conversation  Vith  my  family, 
was  incomparably  more  agreeable  to  me  than  the  theatre, 
cards,  a  concert,  grand  society,  —  all  of  them  things  that 
cost  a  great  deal. 

As  to  the  question  whether  this  unaccustomed  work 
would  not  destroy  the  health  which  is  necessary  in  order 
to  be  able  to  serve  men,  it  turned  out  that,  in  spite  of  the 
positive  assertions  of  famous  physicians  that  tense  physi- 
cal labour,  especially  in  my  years,  may  have  deleterious 
results  (in  what  way  do  they  give  us  something  better  in 
Swedish  gymnastics,  massage,  and  so  forth,  —  appliances 
which  are  to  take  the  place  of  the  natural  conditions  of 
man's  life  ?),  it  turned  out  that  the  tenser  the  labour,  the 
stronger,  fresher,  happier,  and  better  did  I  feel  myself. 
So  it  turned  out  to  be  indisputable  that,  just  as  all  these 
cunning  devices  of  the  human  mind,  new^spapers,  theatres, 
concerts,  visits,  balls,  cards,  periodicals,  novels,  are  nothing 
but  a  means  for  supporting  man's  spiritual  life  outside  its 
natural  conditions  of  labour  for  others,  so  also  all  the  hygi- 


302  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

enic  and  medical  devices  of  the  human  mind  for  the  ap- 
pliances for  food,  drink,  domicile,  ventilation,  heating, 
clothing,  medicines,  water,  massage,  gymnastics,  electrical 
and  all  other  kinds  of  cures,  —  that  all  these  clever  devices 
were  nothing  but  means  for  supporting  man's  bodily  life 
which  is  exempted  from  all  its  natural  conditions  of  labour, 
• —  that  all  this  was  nothing  but  an  arrangement  in  a  her- 
metically closed  room,  by  means  of  chemical  apparatus, 
for  evaporating  water,  and  supplying  the  plants  with  the 
best  air  for  breathing,  whereas  it  is  enough  to  open  a  win- 
dow and  do  that  which  is  proper  not  only  for  man,  but 
also  for  the  animal,  —  to  let  out  and  discharge  the  absorp- 
tion of  food  and  surplus  of  energy  by  means  of  muscular 
labour. 

The  profound  propositions  of  medicine  and  of  hygiene 
for  men  of  our  circle  are  hke  what  a  mechanician  might 
invent  in  order,  by  firing  a  badly  working  engine  and 
stopping  up  all  the  valves,  to  keep  the  engine  from  burst- 
ing. 

When  I  clearly  comprehended  all  this,  I  felt  funny. 
By  a  whole  series  of  doubts  and  searchings  and  by  a  long 
train  of  thought  I  had  arrived  at  the  extraordinary  truth 
that,  if  a  man  has  eyes,  he  has  them  in  order  to  look 
with  them,  and  ears  to  hear,  and  legs  to  walk,  and  hands 
and  a  back  to  work  with  them,  and  that  if  a  man  shall 
not  employ  these  members  for  what  they  were  intended, 
he  will  fare  badly. 

I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  with  us  privileged  people 
the  same  happened  as  with  the  stallions  of  my  acquaint- 
ance. The  clerk,  who  did  not  care  for  horses  and  did  not 
know  anything  about  them,  having  received  his  master's 
order  to  take  the  best  stallions  to  the  horse  mart,  picked 
them  out  of  the  herd  and  put  them  into  stalls ;  and  he 
fed  them  and  gave  them  to  drink  ;  but,  as  he  was  anxious 
about  the  expensive  horses,  he  could  not  make  up  his 
mind  to  leave  them  in  anybody  else's  charge,  and  so  did 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       303 

not  drive  them  or  even  let  them  out.  The  horses  became 
stiff- jointed  and  worthless. 

The  same  has  happened  with  us,  but  with  this  differ- 
ence, that  it  is  impossible  in  any  way  to  deceive  the 
horses  and  that,  not  to  let  them  out,  they  were  kept  in 
one  spot  by  means  of  a  halter,  whereas  we  are  kept  in  just 
such  an  unnatural  and  ruinous  condition  by  means  of 
temptations  vv'hich  have  enmeshed  us  and  hold  us  as  if 
with  chains.  We  have  arranged  our  life  contrary  to  the 
moral  and  the  physical  nature  of  man,  and  we  strain  all 
the  forces  of  our  mind  in  order  to  assure  man  that  this 
is  the  true  life.  Everything  which  we  call  culture,  our 
sciences  and  our  arts,  the  improvements  of  the  comforts 
of  life,  are  attempts  to  deceive  man's  moral,  natural  needs. 
Everything  which  we  call  hygiene  and  medicine  is  an 
attempt  to  deceive  the  natural  physical  demands  of  human 
nature.  But  these  deceptions  have  their  limits,  and  we 
have  reached  them. 

If  such  is  man's  real  life,  it  is  better  not  to  live  at  all, 
says  the  reigning,  most  modern  philosophy  of  Schopen- 
hauer and  of  Hartmann.  If  such  is  life,  it  is  better  not 
to  live,  says  the  increasing  number  of  suicides  among 
the  privileged  classes.  If  such  is  life,  it  is  better  for  the 
future  generations  not  to  live,  says  medicine,  in  collusion 
with  science,  and  the  devices  invented  by  it  for  the  de- 
struction of  female  fertility. 

In  the  Bible  it  says  that,  as  man's  law,  in  the  sweat  of 
thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread  and  in  sorrow  shalt  thou 
bring  forth  children. 

Peasant  Bondarev,  who  has  written  an  article  on  this 
subject,  has  enlightened  me  as  to  the  wisdom  of  this 
utterance.  (In  my  whole  life  two  Eussian  thinkers  have 
had  a  great  moral  effect  upon  me  and  have  made  my 
world  conception  clear  to  me.  These  men  are  not  Russian 
poets,  scholars,  preachers,  but  two  even  now  living  remark- 
able men,  both  of  them  peasants,  Syutaev  and  Bondarev."* 


304  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

But  —  nous  avons  change  tout  ga,  as  the  character  in 
Molifere  said  when  he  ranted  about  medicine  and  asserted 
that  the  liver  was  on  the  left  side.  Nous  avons  change 
tout  fa :  men  do  not  need  to  work  in  order  to  support 
themselves,  —  all  that  will  be  done  by  machines,  —  and 
women  need  not  bear  children.  Science  will  teach  us 
other  means,  and  there  are  too  many  people  as  it  is. 

A  tattered  peasant  makes  the  round  of  Krapivensk 
County.  During  the  war  he  was  a  purchaser  of  grain 
with  an  official  of  the  commissary  department.  While 
cultivating  the  acquaintance  of  the  official,  the  peasant,  as 
they  say,  lost  his  mind,  his  fixed  idea  being  that,  hke  any 
gentleman,  he  does  not  need  to  work,  but  can  receive  the 
maintenance  due  to  him  from  his  Majesty  the  emperor. 
This  peasant  now  calls  himself  liis  Most  Serene  Military 
Prince  Blokhin,  purveyor  of  military  stores  of  all  con- 
ditions. He  says  of  himself  that  he  has  gone  through 
all  the  ranks  and  that,  after  becoming  an  emeritus  mili- 
tary man,  he  would  receive  from  his  Majesty  the  emperor 
an  open  bank,  garments,  uniforms,  horses,  carriages,  tea, 
peas,  servants,  and  every  other  supply. 

To  the  question  whether  he  does  not  want  to  work 
a  little,  he  always  replies  proudly  :  "  Much  obliged,  —  all 
that  will  be  attended  to  by  the  peasants." 

When  you  tell  him  that  the  peasants,  too,  will  not  wish 
to  work,  he  answers :  "  For  the  peasants  this  is  not  diffi- 
cult in  the  performance."  (He  generally  speaks  in  high 
style  and  is  fond  of  verbal  nouns.) 

"  Now  there  is  an  invention  of  machines  for  the  allevi- 
ation of  the  peasants,"  he  says.  "  For  them  there  is  no 
embarrassment." 

When  he  is  asked  what  he  lives  for,  he  replies :  "  For 
the  passing  of  the  time." 

I  always  look  at  this  man  as  into  a  mirror.  I  see 
myself  and  all  our  class  of  people  in  him.  To  end  with 
a  rank,  in  order  to  hve  for  the  passing  of  the  time  and 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  305 

receive  an  open  bank,  while  the  peasants,  for  whom  it  is  no 
embarrassment  on  account  of  the  invention  of  machines, 
manage  all  these  matters,  —  this  is  a  complete  formulation 
of  the  senseless  faith  of  the  people  of  our  circle. 

When  we  ask  what  it  is  we  have  to  do,  we  do  not  ask 
anything,  but  only  affirm,  only  not  with  such  openness 
as  the  Most  Serene  Military  Prince  Blokhin,  who  has 
gone  through  all  the  ranks  and  has  lost  his  reason,  that 
we  do  not  want  to  do  anything. 

He  who  comes  to  his  senses  cannot  ask  this,  because 
on  the  one  hand  everything  he  uses  has  been  made  by 
men's  hands,  and,  on  the  other,  the  moment  a  healthy 
man  wakes  up  and  eats  his  breakfast,  he  has  the  need  to 
work  with  his  legs,  and  hands,  and  brain.  In  order 
to  find  work  and  to  work,  he  must  only  not  hold  himself 
back ;  only  he  who  considers  it  a  disgrace  to  work,  like 
the  lady  who  begs  her  guest  not  to  trouble  herself  to 
open  the  door,  but  to  wait  until  she  calls  a  servant,  — 
only  he  can  put  to  himself  the  question  what  he  is 
to  do. 

The  question  is  not  to  invent  some  work  to  do,  —  a 
man  will  never  succeed  in  doing  all  the  work  for  himself 
and  for  others,  —  but  to  get  rid  of  that  criminal  view  of 
life  that  I  eat  and  sleep  for  my  pleasure,  and  to  acquire 
that  simple  and  true  view,  with  which  a  labouring  man 
grows  up  and  lives,  that  a  man  is  above  everything  else 
a  machine  which  is  charged  by  food,  and  that,  therefore, 
to  support  himself,  it  is  a  shame,  and  hard,  and  impossible 
for  him  to  eat  and  not  to  work ;  that-  to  eat  and  not  to 
work  is  an  exceedingly  perilous  condition,  something  like 
a  conflagration. 

Let  this  consciousness  exist,  and  there  will  be  work, 
and  the  work  will  always  be  joyous  and  it  will  satisfy  the 
spiritual  and  the  physical  demands.  The  matter  presented 
itself  to  me  as  follows :  the  day  of  every  man  is  by  his 
meals  themselves  divided  into  four  parts,  or  four  ploughing 


306  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ? 

periods,  as  the  peasants  say :  (1)  before  breakfast,  (2) 
from  breakfast  until  dinner,  (3)  from  dinner  until  supper, 
and  (4)  from  supper  until  evening.  Man's  activity,  which 
draws  him  to  itself,  is  divided  into  four  kinds:  (1)  the 
activity  of  the  muscular  force,  —  the  work  of  hands,  feet, 
shoulder,  —  hard  labour  which  makes  one  sweat;  (2)  the 
activity  of  the  fingers  and  the  wrist,  —  the  activity  of 
dexterity  of  workmanship ;  (3)  the  activity  of  the  mind 
and  of  the  imagination ;  (4)  the  activity  of  communion 
with  other  men.  Those  benefits  which  man  enjoys  may 
also  be  divided  into  four  parts.  Every  man  makes  use, 
in  the  first  place,  of  the  products  of  hard  labour,  —  of  the 
grain,  cattle,  buildings,  wells,  ponds,  etc. ;  in  the  second 
place,  of  the  activity  of  artisan  labour,  —  of  garments, 
boots,  utensils,  etc. ;  in  the  third  place,  of  the  products  of 
mental  activity,  —  of  the  sciences,  of  the  arts,  and,  in  the 
fourth  place,  of  the  institution  of  the  communion  with 
men,  —  of  acquaintanceship,  etc.  And  it  appeared  to  me 
that  it  would  be  best  so  to  rotate  the  occupations  of  the 
day  as  to  bring  into  play  all  four  human  faculties,  and  to 
repeat  all  four  kinds  of  products,  of  which  one  makes  use, 
in  such  a  way  that  the  four  ploughing  periods  may  be 
devoted  :  the  first  —  to  hard  labour,  the  second  —  to  men- 
tal labour,  the  third  —  to  artisan  labour,  and  the  fourth  — 
to  communion  with  men.  It  is  well  if  one  can  arrange 
his  labour  in  such  a  manner,  but  if  that  is  impossible,  one 
thing  is  important,  and  that  is,  to  have  the  consciousness 
of  a  duty  toward  labour,  a  duty  properly  to  employ  every 
period. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  only  then  would  there  be  destroyed 
that  false  division  of  labour  which  exists  in  our  society, 
and  would  be  established  that  just  division  of  labour 
which  does  not  impair  man's  happiness. 

For  example,  I  had  busied  myself  all  my  life  with 
mental  labour.  I  said  to  myself  that  I  had  so  divided 
the  labour  that  writing,  that  is,  mental  labour,  was  my 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       307 

special  occupation,  and  all  the  other  necessary  occupations 
I  left  to  others  (or  compelled  others)  to  do.  This  appar- 
ently most  convenient  arrangement  for  mental  labour,  to 
say  nothing  of  its  injustice,  was  after  all  disadvantageous 
for  mental  labour. 

My  whole  life,  my  food,  my  sleep,  my  distractions,  I 
had  arranged  in  view  of  these  hours  of  special  labour,  and 
outside  this  labour  I  had  done  nothing.  From  this  it 
followed,  in  the  first  place,  that  1  had  narrowed  down  my 
circle  of  observation  and  knowledge  and  frequently  had 
no  subject  for  study,  and,  having  set  myself  the  problem 
to  describe  the  lives  of  men  (the  lives  of  men  are  the 
perpetual  problem  of  every  mental  activity),  I  frequently 
felt  my  ignorance  and  was  obhged  to  study  and  to  ask 
about  things  which  are  known  to  every  man  who  is  not 
occupied  with  any  special  labour ;  in  the  second  place,  it 
turned  out  that  I  sat  down  to  write  when  I  had  no  inner 
calling  to  write,  and  no  one  demanded  of  me  my  writing 
as  a  writing,  that  is,  my  thoughts,  but  only  v/anted  my 
name  for  magazine  purposes.  I  tried  to  squeeze  out  of 
me  whatever  I  could :  at  times  I  did  not  squeeze  out 
anything,  and  at  others  something  bad,  and  I  experienced 
dissatisfaction  and  pining.  Thus  frequently  passed  days 
and  weeks  when  I  ate,  drank,  slept,  warmed  myself,  and 
did  nothing,  or  did  that  which  no  one  needed,  that  is,  I 
committed  the  most  unquestionable  and  most  abominable 
crime,  which  is  so  rarely,  hardly  ever,  committed  by  a 
man  from  the  labouring  masses.  Now,  when  I  came  to 
recognize  the  necessity  of  physical,  coarse,  and  artisan 
labour,  something  entirely  different  resulted  from  it :  my 
time  was  occupied,  no  matter  how  modestly,  yet  beyond 
doubt  usefully,  and  joyfully,  and  instructively  for  me. 
For  this  reason  I  tore  myself  away  for  my  specialty  from 
this  unquestionably  useful  and  joyous  occupation  only 
when  I  felt  au  inner  need  and  saw  directly  expressed 
demands  for  my  author  labour ;  and  these  demands  con- 


308  WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

ditioned  a  good  quality,  and  so  a  usefulness  and  joyousness 
for  my  special  labour. 

Thus  it  turned  out  that  my  occupation  with  those 
physical  labours  which  are  indispensable  for  me,  as  for 
any  other  man,  not  only  did  not  interfere  with  my  special 
activity,  but  were  also  a  necessary  condition  of  usefulness, 
good  quality,  and  joyousness  of  this  activity. 

A  bird  is  so  built  that  it  must  fly,  walk,  pick,  reflect, 
and  when  it  does  all  that,  it  is  satisfied  and  happy,  —  then, 
to  be  more  brief,  it  is  a  bird.  The  same  is  true  of  a  man : 
only  when  he  walks,  turns,  lifts,  drags,  works  with  his 
fingers,  eyes,  ears,  tongue,  brain,  he  is  satisfied,  he  is  a 
man. 

A  man  who  has  come  to  recognize  his  labour  calling 
will  naturally  strive  for  that  change  of  labour  which  is 
proper  for  him  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  external  and  his 
internal  needs,  and  will  never  change  this  order  except 
when  he  feels  in  himself  an  insuperable  calling  for  some 
exclusive  work  and  there  will  present  themselves  other 
people's  demands  for  this  labour. 

The  quality  of  labour  is  such  that  the  gratification  of 
all  of  man's  needs  wants  the  same  rotation  of  all  kinds 
of  labour,  which  makes  work  not  a  burden,  but  a  joy. 
Only  the  false  belief  that  work  is  a  curse  could  have 
brought  men  to  that  emancipation  from  certain  kinds  of 
labour,  that  is,  to  the  seizure  of  other  men's  labour,  which 
demands  a  forced  occupation  with  a  special  labour  of  other 
men,  which  they  call  division  of  labour. 

We  have  become  so  accustomed  to  our  false  conception 
about  the  arrangement  of  labour  that  it  seems  to  us  that 
it  will  be  better  for  a  shoemaker,  a  machinist,  a  writer,  or 
a  musician,  if  he  shall  exempt  himself  from  labour  which 
is  proper  for  every  man. 

Where  there  will  be  no  violence  exerted  against  another 
man's  labour,  and  no  false  faith  in  the  joyousness  of  idle- 
ness, not  one  man  will,  in  order  to  busy  himself  with  any 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  309 

special  labour,  free  himself  from  physical  work,  which  is 
necessary  for  the  gratification  of  his  needs,  because  the 
special  occupation  is  no  prerogative,  but  a  sacrifice  which 
a  man  brings  to  his  infatuation  and  to  his  brothers. 

A  shoemaker  in  the  country,  who  tears  himself  away 
from  the  joyful  field  labour  and  takes  up  his  work  in 
order  to  mend  or  make  boots  for  his  ueighbours,  deprives 
himself  of  the  ever  joyful  and  useful  labour  in  the  field 
for  others,  only  because  he  is  fond  of  making  boots  and 
knows  that  no  one  can  do  this  as  well  as  he,  and  that 
people  will  be  thankful  to  him  for  it.  But  he  cannot 
even  dream  of  a  desu-e  to  deprive  himself  for  life  of  the 
joyful  rotation  of  labour.  The  same  is  true  of  an  elder,  a 
machinist,  a  writer,  a  scholar.  To  us,  with  our  corrupted 
conceptions,  it  seems  that  if  a  master  degrades  his  clerk 
by  sending  him  back  to  the  country,  or  if  a  minister  is 
sent  to  an  exile  colony,  that  he  has  been  punished,  that 
some  evil  has  been  done  to  him.  In  reahty,  a  benefit 
has  been  conferred  to  him,  that  is,  his  special,  oppressive 
labour  has  been  abandoned  in  favour  of  the  joyful  rotation 
of  labour. 

In  natural  society  all  this  is  quite  different.  I  know  a 
Commune  where  the  people  supported  themselves.  One 
member  of  this  society  was  more  educated  than  the  rest, 
and  he  was  required  to  read,  so  that  he  had  to  prepare 
himself  in  daytime,  to  be  able  to  read  in  the  evening. 
He  did  so  joyfully,  feeling  that  he  was  useful  to  others 
and  was  doing  a  good  deed.  But  he  was  worn  out  by  the 
exclusively  mental  labour,  and  his  health  grew  worse. 
The  members  of  the  Commune  pitied  him  and  asked  him 
to  go  to  work  with  them  in  the  field. 

For  people  who  look  upon  labour  as  the  essence  and 
joy  of  hfe,  the  background,  the  foundation  of  life  will 
always  be  the  struggle  with  nature,  namely,  agricultural, 
mechanical,  and  mental  labour,  and  the  establishment  of 
communion  among  men. 


310  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

The  departure  from  one  or  many  of  these  kinds  of 
labour  and  the  special  work  will  exist  only  when  the 
man  of  the  special  work,  loving  this  work  and  knowing 
that  he  is  doing  it  better  than  any  one  else,  sacrifices  his 
advantage  for  the  gratification  of  demands  directly  made 
on  him.  Only  with  such  a  view  of  labour  and  of  the 
resulting  natural  division  of  labour  there  is  destroyed 
the  curse  which  in  our  imagination  is  imposed  upon 
labour,  and  every  labour  always  becomes  a  joy,  because 
a  man  will  do  an  unquestionably  useful  and  joyous,  unop- 
pressive  work,  or  he  will  have  the  consciousness  of  sacri- 
fice in  the  performance  of  a  more  difficult,  exclusive  work, 
but  which  is  such  as  he  does  for  the  good  of  others. 

But  the  division  of  labour  is  more  advantageous.  More 
advantageous  for  whom  ? 

It  is  more  advantageous  to  make  as  many  boots  and 
cottons  as  possible.  But  who  will  make  these  boots 
and  cottons  ? 

There  are  men  who  for  generations  have  been  making 
nothing  but  pin-heads.  How  can  this  be  more  advan- 
tageous for  people  ? 

If  the  question  is  to  make  as  many  cottons  and  pins 
as  possible,  that  is  so  ;  but  the  question  is  in  the  people, 
in  their  good.  Now  the  good  of  men  is  in  life,  and  life  is 
in  work.  How,  then,  can  the  necessity  of  an  agonizing, 
oppressive  work  be  more  advantageous  for  men  ? 

If  the  question  is  only  the  advantage  for  some  people 
without  considering  the  good  of  all  men,  it  is  most 
advantageous  for  one  set  of  men  to  eat  others.  They  say 
that  human  flesh  tastes  good.  What  is  most  advan- 
tageous for  all  men  —  the  one  thing  which  I  wish  for 
myself  —  is  the  greatest  good  and  the  gratification  of  all 
needs,  of  body  and  soul,  of  conscience,  of  reason,  which 
are  implanted  in  me.  Now  I  found  in  my  case  that  for 
my  good  and  for  the  gratification  of  these  needs  of  mine 
I  need  only  cure  myself  from  that  madness  in  which  I 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO    THEN?  311 

had  lived  with  that  Krapivensk  madman,  and  which  con- 
sisted in  this :  that  gentlemen  are  not  supposed  to  work, 
and  that  others  must  attend  to  that  and,  without  invent- 
ing anything,  do  only  what  is  proper  to  man,  while  grati- 
fying his  needs.  When  I  found  this,  I  convinced  myself 
that  this  labour  for  the  gratification  of  one's  needs  natu- 
rally divided  itseK  into  different  kinds  of  labour,  each  of 
which  has  its  charm  and  not  only  forms  no  burden,  but 
also  serves  as  a  rest  from  another  kind  of  labour. 

In  a  coarse  way  (by  no  means  insisting  on  the  correct- 
ness of  such  a  division)  I  divided  this  labour  according  to 
those  demands  which  I  make  on  life  into  four  parts, 
to  correspond  to  the  four  periods  of  work  of  which  the 
day  is  composed,  and  I  try  to  satisfy  these  demands. 

So  these  are  the  answers  which  I  found  for  myself  in 
reply  to  the  question  what  we  shall  do. 

The  first :  not  to  lie  to  myself ;  no  matter  how  distant 
my  patli  of  life  may  be  from  that  true  path  which  reason 
opens  to  me,  not  to  be  afraid  of  the  truth. 

The  second :  to  renounce  the  consciousness  of  my 
righteousness,  my  prerogatives,  my  privileges  in  compari- 
son with  other  men,  and  to  recognize  myself  guilty. 

The  third:  to  fulfil  that  eternal,  indisputable  law  of 
man,  —  with  the  labour  of  my  whole  being  to  struggle 
with  Nature  for  the  purpose  of  supporting  my  own  life 
and  that  of  other  men. 


XXXIX. 

I  HAVE  finished,  for  I  have  said  everything  which  con- 
cerned me,  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  the  desire  to  tell  also 
that  which  concerns  everybody  :  to  verify  those  deduc- 
tions at  which  I  have  arrived  by  general  considerations. 

What  I  wish  to  talk  about  is  why  it  seems  to  me  that 
very  many  people  of  our  circle  must  arrive  at  the  same 
thing  at  which  I  have  arrived,  and  also  what  wiU  happen 
if  even  a  few  people  will  arrive  at  the  same. 

I  think  that  many  people  will  arrive  at  the  same  con- 
clusions at  which  I  have  arrived,  because  if  men  of  our 
circle,  of  our  caste,  will  take  a  serious  look  at  themselves, 
young  people,  who  are  in  search  of  their  personal  happi- 
ness, will  be  terrified  at  the  ever  increasing  inanity  of 
their  life,  which  clearly  draws  them  to  their  perdition ; 
conscientious  people  will  be  terrified  at  the  cruelty  and 
the  illegality  of  their  life  ;  and  timid  people  wiU  be  terri- 
fied at  the  perilousness  of  their  life. 

The  misfortune  of  our  life :  no  matter  how  much  we, 
the  rich,  with  the  aid  of  science  and  of  art,  mend  and 
support  this  our  false  life,  this  life  with  every  year  be- 
comes weaker,  and  more  morbid,  and  more  painful ;  with 
every  year  there  is  an  increase  in  the  number  of  suicides 
and  in  the  refraining  from  childbirth  ;  with  every  year  the 
new  generations  of  men  of  this  class  become  weaker  and 
weaker ;  with  every  year  we  feel  the  increasing  gloom  of 
this  hfe. 

It  is  obvious  that  on  this  road  of  the  increase  of  the 
comforts  and  pleasures  of  life,  of  cures  and  artificial  teeth, 
hair,  breathing,  massages,  and  so  forth,  there  can  be  no 

312 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       313 

salvation  ;  this  truth  has  become  such  a  truism  that  in 
the  newspapers  they  print  advertisements  about  stomachic 
powders  for  the  rich  under  the  title,  "  Blessings  for  the 
poor,"  where  it  says  that  only  the  poor  have  a  good  diges- 
tion, but  that  the  rich  need  assistance,  and  with  it  these 
powders. 

This  cannot  be  mended  by  any  amusements,  comforts, 
powders,  —  this  can  be  corrected  only  by  a  change  of 
life. 

Tlie  disagreement  of  otir  life  ivith  our  conscience  :  no 
matter  how  much  we  may  try  to  justify  to  ourselves  our 
unfaithfulness  to  humanity,  all  our  justifications  scatter 
to  the  winds  before  that  which  is  obvious  :  around  us 
people  die  from  work  above  their  strength  and  from  want ; 
we  ruin  the  food,  the  garments,  the  labour  of  men,  in 
order  to  find  diversion  and  change.  And  so  the  conscience 
of  a  man  of  our  circle,  if  there  is  but  a  small  residue  of  it 
left  in  him,  cannot  fall  asleep,  and  it  poisons  all  those 
comforts  and  pleasures  of  life  which  are  furnished  to  us 
by  our  suffering  brothers  who  perish  in  labour. 

Not  only  does  every  conscientious  man  feel  this,  he 
would  be  glad  to  forget  it,  but  he  cannot  do  so  in  our 
time,  —  the  whole  better  part  of  science  and  of  art,  the 
one  in  which  the  meaning  of  its  calling  is  left,  reminds  us 
constantly  of  our  cruelty  and  of  our  illegal  situation.  The 
old,  firm  justifications  are  all  destroyed ;  the  new,  ephem- 
eral justifications  of  progress  of  science  for  science'  sake, 
and  of  art  for  art's  sake,  do  not  bear  the  light  of  simple 
common  sense. 

The  conscience  of  men  cannot  be  put  at  rest  with  new 
inventions,  but  only  with  a  change  of  life,  with  which 
there  will  be  no  need  and  no  cause  for  any  justification. 

TJie  pcrilousncss  of  onr  life :  no  matter  how  we  try 
to  conceal  from  ourselves  the  simple,  most  obvious 
danger  of  the  exhaustion  of  the  patience  of  those  men 
whom  we  choke ;  no  matter  how  much  we  try  to  coun- 


314  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

teract  this  danger  by  all  kinds  of  deceptions,  acts  of 
violence,  and  propitiations,  this  danger  is  growing  with 
every  day  and  with  every  hour,  and  has  been  threatening 
us  for  a  long  time,  and  even  now  it  has  matured  so  much 
that  we  with  difficulty  hold  ourselves  in  our  boat  over 
the  agitated  sea,  which  is  about  to  swamp  us  and  angrily 
to  swallow  and  devour  us.  The  labouring  revolution, 
with  the  terrors  of  destructions  and  murders,  has  not  only 
been  threatening  us,  but  we  have  been  living  on  it  for 
thirty  years,  and  so  far  we  have  with  all  kinds  of  cunning 
devices  managed  for  a  time  to  postpone  its  eruption. 
Such  is  the  state  of  Europe;  such  is  the  state  with  us, 
and  it  is  even  worse  with  us,  because  it  has  no  safety- 
valves.  The  classes  v/hich  oppress  the  masses,  except  the 
Tsar,  now  have  no  justification  in  the  eyes  of  the  masses ; 
they  all  hold  themselves  in  their  position  by  nothing  but 
violence,  cunning,  and  opportunism,  that  is,  by  agihty, 
but  the  hatred  in  the  best  representatives  of  the  masses 
and  the  contempt  for  us  among  the  best  are  growing 
with  every  hour. 

Among  our  masses  there  has  in  the  last  three  or  four 
years  come  into  general  use  a  new,  significant  word ;  this 
word,  which  I  had  never  heard  before,  they  now  use 
opprobriously  in  the  streets  and  define  us  as  "  drones." 

The  hatred  and  contempt  of  the  oppressed  masses  are 
growing,  and  the  physical  and  moral  forces  of  the  wealthy 
classes  are  weakening ;  the  deception,  by  means  of  which 
everything  is  holding  itself,  is  being  w^orn  out,  and  the 
wealthy  classes  can  no  longer  console  themselves  by 
anything  in  this  mortal  peril. 

It  is  impossible  to  return  to  the  old  conditions  ;  it  is 
impossible  to  renew  the  destroyed  prestige :  there  is  but 
one  thing  left  to  do  for  those  who  do  not  wish  to  change 
their  lives,  and  that  is,  to  hope  that  things  will  suffice 
for  their  life,  and  afterward  let  it  be  as  it  may. 

Even  so  does  the  blind  crowd  of  the  wealthy  classes 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  315 

do ;  but  the  peril  is  growing  all  the  time,  and  the  terrible 
catastrophe  is  coming  nearer. 

Three  causes  show  to  the  men  of  the  wealthy  classes 
the  necessity  for  a  change  of  their  life :  the  need  for  a 
personal  good  for  themselves  and  for  their  nearest  friends, 
which  is  not  satisfied  on  the  path  on  wdiich  the  rich  are 
standing ;  the  necessity  of  satisfying  the  voice  of  con- 
science, the  impossibility  of  which  is  obvious  on  the  pres- 
ent path,  and  the  menacing  and  ever  gi'owing  danger  of 
life,  which  is  not  removed  by  any  external  means ;  all 
three  causes  taken  together  must  lead  the  men  of  the 
wealthy  classes  to  a  change  of  their  lives,  to  a  change 
which  would  satisfy  their  good  and  also  their  consciences, 
and  would  remove  the  danger. 

There  is  but  one  such  a  change :  to  stop  cheating,  to 
repent,  and  to  recognize  labour  not  as  a  curse,  but  as  a 
joyous  affair  of  life. 

But  what  of  it  that  I  shall  work  ten,  eight,  or  five 
hours  at  physical  labour,  which  thousands  of  peasants 
will  gladly  do  for  the  money  which  I  have,  I  am  asked. 

The  first  thing  and  the  simplest  and  most  indubitable 
thing  will  be  this,  that  you  will  be  merrier,  healthier, 
more  cheerful,  and  better,  and  you  will  know  what  the 
real  hfe  is,  from  which  you  have  been  hiding  yourself,  or 
which  has  been  concealed  from  you. 

The  second  thing  will  be  this,  that  if  you  have  a  con- 
science, it  will  not  only  not  suffer,  as  it  does  now,  looking 
at  the  work  of  men  (the  meaning  of  which  we,  who  do 
not  know  it,  always  magnify  or  minimize),  but  you  will 
all  the  time  experience  a  joyous  consciousness  of  the  fact 
that  with  every  day  you  more  and  more  satisfy  the 
demand  of  your  conscience  and  get  away  from  that  ter- 
rible position  of  such  an  accumulation  of  evil  in  our  life 
that  there  is  no  possibility  of  doing  any  good  to  people ; 
you  will  feel  a  joy  at  living  freely  with  the  possibility  of 
the  good ;  you  will  knock  a  window,  an  opening  of  light. 


316  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

into  the  sphere  of  the  moral  world,  which  was  hidden 
from  you.  What  will  happen  will  be  this  :  instead  of  the 
eternal  fear  of  retribution  for  your  evil  you  will  feel  that 
you  are  saving  others  from  this  retribution,  and,  above 
all,  that  you  are  saving  the  oppressed  from  the  grievous 
sensation  of  malice  and  of  revenge. 

"  But  it  is  ridiculous,"  they  say,  "  for  the  men  of  our 
society,  with  the  profound  questions  before  us,  —  philo- 
sophical, scientific,  political,  artistic,  ecclesiastical,  social 
questions,  —  for  us  ministers,  senators,  academicians,  pro- 
fessors, artists,  singers,  for  us,  one-fourth  of  whose  time  is 
so  highly  appreciated  by  men,  to  waste  our  time,  —  on 
what  ?  —  on  cleaning  our  boots,  washing  our  shirts,  dig- 
ging, setting  out  potatoes,  or  feeding  our  chickens  and 
our  cows,  and  so  forth,  —  on  those  things  which  are 
gladly  done  for  us,  not  only  by  our  janitor  and  our  cook, 
but  also  by  thousands  of  men  who  highly  value  our 
time." 

But  why  do  we  dress,  wash,  scratch  ourselves  (excuse 
the  details),  why  do  we  hold  our  vessel,  why  do  we  walk 
ourselves,  hand  a  chair  to  a  lady  and  to  guests,  open  and 
close  doors,  help  people  into  a  carriage,  and  do  hundreds 
of  similar  things,  which  formerly  slaves  used  to  do  for 
us? 

Because  we  consider  this  proper,  because  so  demands 
human  dignity,  that  is  man's  duty,  man's  obligation. 

The  same  is  true  of  physical  labour. 

Man's  dignity,  liis  sacred  duty  and  obligation,  is  to 
make  use  of  the  hands  and  feet  given  him  for  the  purpose 
for  which  they  are  given  to  him,  and  to  use  the  devoured 
food  for  work  which  is  productive  of  this  food,  and  not  to 
let  them  become  atrophied,  not  wash  and  clean  them  and 
use  them  only  for  the  purpose  of  shoving  food,  drink, 
and  cigarettes  into  the  mouth. 

Such  is  the  significance  which  the  occupation  with 
physical  labour  has  for  each  man  in  any  society ;  but  in 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  317 

our  society,  where  the  deviation  from  this  law  of  Nature 
has  become  the  misfortune  of  the  wh(jle  circle  of  men, 
the  occupation  with  physical  lab(jur  receives  also  another 
significance,  —  that  of  a  sermon  and  of  an  activity  which 
removes  the  terrible  calamities  which  threaten  humanity. 
To  say  that  for  a  cultured  man  the  occupation  with 
physical  labour  is  insignificant  is  the  same  as  saying  in 
the  building  of  a  temple :  "  What  importance  can  there 
be  in  placing  one  stone  evenly  in  its  place  ? " 

Every  great  work  is,  indeed,  done  under  conditions  of 
iraperceptibility,  modesty,  simplicity :  it  is  impossible  to 
plough,  to  build,  to  graze  cattle,  or  even  to  think  under 
an  illumination,  under  roar  of  cannon,  and  in  uniforms. 
The  illumination,  the  roar  of  cannon,  music,  uniforms, 
cleanliness,  splendour,  with  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
combine  the  idea  of  the  importance  of  an  occupation,  on 
the  contrary,  always  serve  as  signs  that  the  matter  is 
lacking  importance. 

Great,  true  acts  are  always  simple  and  modest. 

And  such  is  the  very  great  work  which  is  before  us, — 
the  solution  of  those  terrible  contradictions  in  which  we 
live. 

The  acts  which  solve  these  contradictions  are  these 
modest,  imperceptible,  apparently  ridiculous  acts ;  minis- 
tering to  ourselves,  physical  labour  for  ourselves  and,  if 
possible,  for  others.  They  are  incumbent  on  us,  the  rich, 
if  we  comprehend  the  misfortune,  unscrupulousness,  and 
danger  of  the  situation,  into  which  we  have  fallen. 

What  will  come  of  it  if  I  and  two  or  three  dozen  men 
will  not  disdain  work  and  will  consider  it  necessarv  for 
our  happiness,  peace  of  mind,  and  security  ?  Wliat  will 
happen  will  be  this :  A  dozen,  two,  three  dozen  men 
will,  without  coming  into  conflict  with  any  one,  without 
any  governmental  or  revolutionary  violence,  solve  for 
themselves  the  apparently  insoluble  question  which  is 
standing  before  the  whole  world,  and  will  solve  it  in  such 


318  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

a  way  that  they  will  live  better,  that  their  consciences 
will  become  calmer,  and  that  the  evil  of  oppression  will 
no  longer  be  terrible  to  them ;  other  people  will  see  that 
the  good,  for  which  they  are  searching  everywhere,  is 
here  close  to  them,  that  the  apparently  insoluble  contra- 
dictions of  conscience  and  of  the  structure  of  the  universe 
are  solved  in  the  easiest  and  most  joyous  manner  possible, 
aud  that,  instead  of  being  afraid  of  men  who  surround 
them,  it  is  necessary  to  come  nearer  to  them  and  love 
them. 

The  apparently  insoluble  economic  and  social  question 
is  the  question  of  Kryldv's  box :  it  opens  in  a  simple 
manner. 

But  it  will  not  open  itself  so  long  as  people  will  not 
simply  do  the  first  and  most  simple  thing,  —  so  long  as 
they  do  not  open  it. 

The  apparently  insoluble  question  is  the  ancient  ques- 
tion of  the  exploitation  of  other  people's  labour ;  this 
question  has  in  our  day  found  its  expression  in  property. 

In  our  day  property  is  the  root  of  every  evil,  —  of  the 
sufferings  of  men  who  have  it  or  who  are  deprived  of  it, 
and  of  bites  of  conscience  of  those  who  misuse  it,  and  of 
the  danger  of  conflicts  between  those  who  have  an  abun- 
dance of  it  and  those  who  are  deprived  of  it.  Property  is 
the  root  of  evil,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  that  tov/ard 
which  all  the  activity  of  modern  society  is  directed,  that 
which  guides  the  activity  of  our  whole  world. 

Governments  and  states  intrigue  and  fight  for  the  pos- 
session of  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  of  land  in  Africa,  in 
China,  on  the  Balkan  peninsula.  Bankers,  merchants, 
manufacturers,  agriculturists,  labour,  devise,  suffer,  and 
cause  others  to  suffer  for  the  sake  of  possessions ;  offi- 
cials, artisans,  struggle,  deceive,  oppress,  suffer  for  the  sake 
of  possessions ;  courts,  the  police,  guard  property ;  hard 
labour,  prisons,  —  all  the  terrors  of  so-called  punishments, 
—  are  all  on  account  of  property. 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEN  ?       319 

Property  is  the  root  of  all  evil ;  and  the  whole  world  is 
busy  dividing  and  protecting  property. 

What,  then,  is  property  ? 

People  are  accustomed  to  think  that  ownership  is 
something  which  actually  belongs  to  man.  This  is  the 
reason  why  they  have  called  it  ownership.  We  say  of  a 
house  and  of  a  hand  alike :  "  My  own  hand,"  and  "  My 
own  house." 

But  this  is  obviously  a  delusion  and  a  superstition. 

We  know,  and  if  we  do  not  know,  we  can  easily  see, 
that  ownership  is  only  a  means  for  using  the  labour  of 
others ;  but  the  labour  of  others  can  in  no  way  be  my 
own.  It  even  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  concept 
of  ownership,  which  is  very  exact  and  precise.  A  man 
has  always  called,  and  always  will  call,  his  own  what  is 
subject  to  his  will  and  is  connected  with  his  conscious- 
ness, —  his  body.  The  moment  a  man  calls  that  his  own 
which  is  not  his  body,  but  which  he  wishes  should  be 
subjected  to  his  will,  like  his  body,  he  makes  a  mistake 
and  lays  up  disappointments  and  sufferings  for  himself 
and  subjects  himself  to  the  necessity  of  making  others 
suffer. 

A  man  calls  his  wife,  his  children,  his  slaves,  his  chat- 
tels his  property,  but  reality  always  shows  him  his  mis- 
take, and  he  is  obliged  to  renounce  this  superstition  or  to 
suffer  and  cause  others  to  suffer. 

At  the  present  time  we,  nominally  rejecting  the  owner- 
ship of  men,  thanks  to  the  money  and  the  exaction  of  the 
money  by  the  government,  proclaim  our  property  rights 
to  money,  that  is,  to  the  labour  of  others. 

But  as  the  property  right  to  one's  wife,  son,  slave,  or 
horse  is  a  fiction,  which  is  destroyed  by  reahty  and  only 
causes  him  to  suffer  who  beheves  in  it,  because  my  wife, 
my  son,  will  never  submit  to  my  will,  like  my  body, 
and  my  true  property  will  still  be  in  my  body,  so  also  the 
ownership  of  money  will  never  be  an  ownership,  but  only 


320  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

a  self-deception  and  source  of  sufferings,  while  my  prop- 
erty will  still  consist  in  my  body,  in  that  which  always 
submits  to  my  will  and  is  connected  with  my  conscious- 
ness. 

It  is  only  to  us,  who  have  become  accustomed  to  call 
that  which  is  not  our  body  our  property,  that  it  can 
appear  that  such  a  wild  superstition  may  be  useful  to  us 
and  remain  without  any  harmful  consequences  to  us ;  but 
we  need  only  reflect  on  the  essence  of  the  matter  in  order 
to  see  that  this  superstition,  like  any  other,  brings  with  it 
the  most  terrible  consequences. 

Let  us  take  the  simplest  example. 

I  consider  myself  my  own  property  and  another  man 
my  property. 

I  must  know  how  to  prepare  a  dinner.  If  I  did  not 
have  the  superstition  about  the  ownership  of  another 
man,  I  should  have  taught  this  art,  like  any  other  I  may 
need,  to  my  property,  that  is  to  my  body ;  but  instead  I 
teach  it  to  my  imaginary  property,  and  the  result  is  this, 
that  my  cook  does  not  obey  me,  does  not  wish  to  please 
me,  and  even  runs  away  from  me,  or  dies,  and  I  am  left 
with  the  ungratitied,  excited  necessity  of  gratifying  my- 
self and  with  the  lost  habit  of  studying,  and  with  the 
consciousness  that  I  have  lost  as  much  time  in  my  worries 
with  this  cook  as  would  suffice  for  me  to  have  learned 
the  art  myself.  The  same  is  true  of  the  ownership  of 
buildings,  garments,  utensils,  land,  and  money.  Every 
imaginary  property  evokes  in  me  non-corresponding,  not 
always  gratifiable,  needs,  and  deprives  me  of  the  possibility 
of  acquiring  for  my  true  and  unquestionable  property,  for 
my  body,  that  knowledge,  that  skill,  those  habits,  those 
perfections,  which  I  could  have  acquired. 

The  result  is  always  this,  that  I  have  vainly  lost  my 
strength  for  myself,  for  my  true  property,  and  sometimes 
even  my  life  without  a  residue  for  what  never  has  been, 
and  never  could  be,  my  property. 


WHAT    SHALL   WE    DO    THEN?  321 

I  provide  myself  with  what  I  imagine  to  be  my  own 
library,  my  own  picture-gallery,  my  own  apartments,  my 
own  garments,  obtain  my  own  money  with  which  to  buy 
what  I  need,  and  the  end  of  it  is  that,  w^hile  busying 
myself  with  this  imaginary  property  as  though  it  were 
real,  I  completely  lose  the  consciousness  of  the  distinction 
between  that  which  is  my  real  property,  over  which  I 
actually  can  work,  which  can  serve  me,  and  which  will 
always  remain  in  my  power,  and  that  which  is  not,  and 
cannot  be,  my  property,  no  matter  how  I  may  call  it, 
and  which  cannot  be  the  subject  of  my  activity. 

Words  have  always  a  clear  meaning  so  long  as  we  do 
not  intentionally  give  them  a  false  significance. 

What  does  property  mean  ?  It  means  that  which  is 
given  and  belongs  to  me  exclusively,  that  which  I  can 
always  employ  in  any  manner  I  may  wish,  which  no  one 
can  ever  take  away  from  me,  which  remains  mine  to 
the  end  of  my  life,  and  that  which  I  must  use,  increase, 
improve. 

Such  a  subject  of  ownership  for  each  man  is  only  he 
himself. 

And  yet  it  is  in  this  very  sense  that  the  imaginary 
ownership  of  men  is  taken,  the  one  in  the  name  of  which 
(to  do  the  impossible,  —  to  make  this  imaginary  property 
real)  all  the  terrible  evil  in  the  world  takes  place,  —  the 
wars  and  executions,  and  courts,  and  prisons,  and  luxury, 
and  debauch,  and  murder,  and  the  ruin  of  men. 

What,  then,  will  happen  if  a  dozen  men  will  plough, 
chop  wood,  make  boots,  not  from  necessity,  but  from  the 
consciousness  that  a  man  must  work  and  that  the  more 
he  works  the  better  it  will  be  for  him  ?  What  will  hap- 
pen will  be  this,  that  a  dozen  men,  or  even  one  man,  will, 
both  in  cognition  and  in  fact,  show  men  that  that  terri])le 
evil  from  which  they  suffer  is  not  a  law  of  fate,  the  will  of 
God,  or  some  historical  necessity,  but  a  superstition,  wliich, 
far  from  being  strong  and  terrible,  is  weak  and  insignifi- 


322  WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN? 

cant,  and  which  one  must  stop  believing  in,  as  in  idols,  in 
order  to  be  freed  from  it  and  to  destroy  it,  like  a  frail 
cobweb. 

Men  who  will  begin  to  work  in  order  to  fulfil  the  joy- 
ous law  of  life,  that  is,  who  labour  for  the  fulfilment  of  the 
law  of  work,  will  free  themselves  from  the  superstition  of 
personal  ownership,  which  is  pregnant  with  calamities ; 
and  all  the  institutions  of  the  world,  which  exist  for  the 
support  of  this  putative  property  outside  of  one's  body, 
will  appear  to  them  not  only  useless,  but  even  embarrass- 
ing ;  and  it  will  become  clear  to  all  that  all  these  institu- 
tions are  not  indispensable,  but  injurious,  imaginary,  and 
false  conditions  of  life. 

For  a  man  who  regards  labour  not  as  a  curse,  but  as  a 
joy,  the  property  outside  of  his  body,  that  is,  the  right  or 
the  possibihty  of  using  the  labour  of  others,  will  be  not 
only  useless,  but  even  embarrassing. 

If  I  am  fond  and  in  the  habit  of  preparing  my  own 
dinner,  the  fact  that  another  man  will  do  this  for  me 
will  deprive  me  of  my  customary  occupation  and  will  not 
satisfy  me  so  much  as  I  used  to  satisfy  myself ;  besides, 
the  acquisition  of  imaginary  property  will  be  useless  for 
such  a  man :  a  man  who  regards  labour  as  life  itself  fills 
liis  hfe  with  it,  and  so  is  less  and  less  in  the  need  of  the 
labour  of  others,  that  is,  in  property  for  the  occupation  of 
his  idle  time,  for  the  pleasures  and  adornment  of  his  life. 

If  a  man's  life  is  filled  with  labour,  he  needs  no  rooms, 
no  furniture,  no  varied  beautiful  garments ;  he  needs  less 
of  expensive  food,  no  means  for  transportation,  no  dis- 
tractions. 

But  above  all  else,  a  man  who  regards  work  as  the 
business  and  joy  of  his  life  will  not  seek  any  alleviation 
of  his  labour  which  can  be  given  to  him  through  the  work 
of  others. 

A  man  who  retrards  hfe  as  work  will  have  for  his 
aim,  in  proportion  as  he  acquires  skill,  agility,  and  endur- 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN?  323 

ance,  more  and  more  work,  which  fills  his  life  more  and 
more. 

For  such  a  man,  who  assumes  the  meaning  of  his  hfe 
to  lie  in  labour,  and  not  in  its  results,  not  in  the  acqui- 
sition of  property,  that  is,  in  the  labour  of  others,  there 
cannot  even  be  any  question  about  instruments  of 
labour. 

Though  such  a  man  will  always  choose  the  most 
productive  instruments  of  labour,  he  will  get  the  same 
satisfaction  from  work  even  if  he  works  with  the  least 
productive  tools. 

If  there  is  a  steam  plough,  he  will  plough  with  it ;  if 
there  is  none,  he  will  plough  with  a  horse  plough ;  and 
if  he  has  not  that,  he  will  use  a  wooden  plough ;  and  if 
not  that,  he  will  dig  with  a  spade,  and  under  all  con- 
ditions will  he  equally  attain  his  aim,  which  is  to  pass  his 
hfe  in  work  useful  to  men,  and  so  he  will  derive  from  it 
his  full  satisfaction. 

The  condition  of  such  a  man,  both  from  external  and 
internal  conditions,  \vill  be  happier  than  his  who  puts  his 
hfe  in  the  acquisition  of  property.^ 

From  external  conditions  such  a  man  will  never  be  in 
want,  because  men,  seeing  his  desire  to  work,  as  in  the 
water-power  to  which  a  mill  is  attached,  will  always  try 
to  make  his  labour  most  productive,  and,  to  have  it  as 
productive  as  possible,  they  will  make  his  material  exist- 
ence secure,  which  they  do  not  do  for  men  who  strive 
after  possessions.  But  the  security  of  material  conditions 
is  all  a  man  needs. 

From  internal  conditions  such  a  man  will  always  be 
happier  than  he  who  seeks  possessions,  because  the  latter 
will  never  obtain  what  he  is  striving  after,  while  the  first 
will  always  get  it  in  accordance  with  his  strength:  the 
feeble,  the  old,  the  dying,  as  the  proverb  says,  with  a 
crowbar  in  their  hands,  will  receive  full  satisfaction  and 
the  love  and  sympathy  of  men. 


324  WHAT   SHALL    WE   DO    THEN? 

So  that  is  what  will  happen  if  a  few  crazy,  odd  people 
will  plough,  make  boots,  and  so  forth,  instead  of  smoking 
cigarettes,  playing  vint,  and  travelling  everywhere,  taking 
with  them  their  ennui  during  the  ten  hours  of  the  day 
which  every  mental  worker  has  free  ! 

What  will  happen  will  be  this,  that  these  crazy  people 
will  show  in  fact  that  the  imaginary  property,  which  is 
the  cause  of  suffering  and  making  others  suffer,  is  un- 
necessary for  happiness  and  embarrassing,  and  that  it  is 
only  a  superstition,  —  that  ownership,  true  ownership, 
is  vested  only  in  one's  head,  hands,  and  feet,  and  that,  in 
order  actually  to  exploit  this  property  to  good  advantage 
and  with  joy,  it  is  necessary  to  reject  the  false  conception 
of  property  outside  of  one's  body,  on  which  we  waste  the 
best  forces  of  our  life.  What  will  happen  will  be  this, 
that  these  men  will  show  that  only  when  man  stops 
believing  in  the  imaginary  property  he  properly  works 
his  real  property,  his  ability,  his  body,  so  that  they  will 
give  him  returns  a  hundredfold  and  happiness  of  which 
we  have  no  conception,  and  he  will  be  such  a  useful, 
strong,  and  good  man  that,  no  matter  where  he  may  be 
thrown,  he  will  always  alight  on  his  feet,  will  every- 
where always  be  a  brother  to  all,  and  will  be  known  and 
needed  and  dear  to  all.  And  people,  looking  at  one,  at  a 
dozen  such  crazy  men,  will  comprehend  what  they  must 
all  do  in  order  to  untie  that  terrible  knot  into  which  they 
have  been  drawn  by  the  superstition  of  ownership,  in 
order  to  free  themselves  from  the  unfortunate  position 
from  which  they  all  groan  in  one  voice,  not  knowing  a 
way  out  from  it. 

But  what  will  one  man  do  in  a  crowd  which  does  not 
agree  with  him  ? 

There  is  no  reflection  which  more  obviously  shows  the 
unrighteousness  of  those  who  employ  it. 

The  tow-men  tow  a  boat  against  the  stream.  Is  it  pos- 
sible there  will  be  found  such  a  stupid  tow-man  who  will 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  325 

refuse  to  do  his  pulling,  because  he  is  not  able  by  himself 
to  tow  the  boat  up  the  river  ? 

He  who  in  addition  to  his  rights  of  an  animal  life,  such 
as  to  eat  and  to  sleep,  recognizes  any  human  duty,  knows 
full  well  wherein  this  duty  consists,  as  well  as  the  tow- 
man  knows,  who  shoulders  the  tow-rope.  The  tow-man 
knows  very  well  that  all  he  has  to  do  is  to  pull  the  rope 
and  walk  in  a  well-trod  direction.  He  will  be  looking 
for  something  to  do  and  how  to  do  it,  only  when  he  has 
thrown  ofi"  his  rope.  And  what  is  true  of  the  tow^-men 
and  of  all  other  men  who  do  a  common  work  is  also  true  of 
the  work  of  all  humanity  ;  each  man  must  not  take  off  the 
tow-rope,  but  musi  pull  at  it  in  the  direction  indicated  by 
the  master  and  opposite  to  the  current.  For  this  the 
same  intellect  has  been  given  to  men  that  the  direction 
might  be  ahvays  one  and  the  same. 

This  direction  is  given  so  obviously,  so  indubitably,  in 
the  whole  life  of  all  men  about  us,  and  in  the  conscience 
of  every  individual  man,  and  in  the  whole  expression  of 
men's  wisdom,  that  only  he  who  does  not  want  to  work 
can  say  that  he  does  not  see  it. 

So  what  will  come  of  it  ? 

This,  that  one  or  two  men  wiU  pull ;  looking  at  them, 
a  third  man  will  join  them,  and  so  the  best  men  will  join 
them  until  the  matter  wiU  advance  and  go  as  though 
pushing  and  inviting  those  who  do  not  understand  what 
is  being  done  and  for  what  purpose. 

The  men  who  consciously  work  for  the  fulfilment  of 
the  law  of  God  will  at  first  be  joined  by  men  who  semi- 
consciously,  taking  things  half  on  faith,  recognize  the 
same  thing ;  then  they  will  be  joined  by  a  large  number 
of  men  who  recognize  the  same  through  their  faith  in  the 
representative  men,  and,  finally,  the  majority  of  men  will 
recognize  the  same,  and  then  all  men  will  stop  ruining 
themselves  and  will  find  happiness.  That  will  be  (and  it 
will  be  very  soon)  when  the  men  of  our  circle,  and  after 


326  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

them  the  vast  majority  of  the  labourers,  will  not  consider 
it  a  shame  to  clean  privies,  and  yet  not  a  shame  to  till 
them  and  let  people,  their  brothers,  clean  them ;  a  shame 
to  call  on  people  in  their  personal  boots,  and  yet  not  a 
shame  to  pass  in  galoshes  by  men  who  have  no  foot- 
gear ;  a  shame  not  to  know  French  or  the  latest  news,  and 
not  a  shame  to  eat  bread  and  yet  not  to  know  how  to  set 
it ;  a  shame  not  to  have  a  starched  shirt  and  clean  dresses, 
and  not  a  shame  to  wear  clean  garments,  in  order  to  point 
out  their  idleness ;  a  shame  to  have  dirty  hands,  and  not 
a  shame  not  to  have  callous  hands. 

All  that  will  happen  when  public  opinion  will  demand 
it.  But  public  opinion  will  demand  it  when  in  the  minds 
of  men  will  be  destroyed  the  offences  which  concealed 
the  truth  from  them.  Within  my  memory  great  changes 
have  taken  place  in  this  sense.  And  these  changes  have 
taken  place  only  because  public  opinion  changed.  Within 
my  memory  it  was  considered  a  shame  for  rich  people  not 
to  drive  out  with  four  horses  and  two  lackeys,  and  not  to 
have  a  lackey  or  chambermaid  to  dress  and  wash  them 
and  hold  the  vessel  for  them,  and  so  forth ;  and  now  it 
has  suddenly  become  a  shame  not  to  dress  oneself  and 
to  drive  out  with  lackeys.  All  these  changes  were  pro- 
duced by  public  opinion. 

Can  we  not  clearly  see  the  changes  which  are  being 
wrought  in  public  opinion  ?  It  was  enough  for  the 
offence  which  justified  the  serf  right  to  be  destroyed 
twenty-five  years  ago,  in  order  that  public  opinion  should 
change  in  regard  to  what  is  praiseworthy  and  what 
shameful,  and  for  life  to  become  changed.  The  offence 
which  justifies  the  power  of  money  over  men  need  be 
destroyed,  and  pubhc  opinion  will  change  as  to  what  is 
praiseworthy  and  what  disgraceful,  and  life  will  change 
with  it. 

But  the  destruction  of  the  offence  of  the  justification  of 
the  money  power  and  change  of  public  opinion  in  this 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  327 

respect  are  rapidly  taking  place.  This  offence  is  trans- 
parent now,  and  barely  veils  the  truth.  We  need  but 
take  a  close  look  in  order  to  see  clearly  that  change  of 
public  opinion  which  not  only  umst  take  place,  but  which 
has  already  taken  place,  though  it  is  still  unconscious  and 
has  not  been  given  a  name.  Let  an  ever  so  little  educated 
man  of  our  time  reflect  on  what  results  from  those  views 
of  the  world  which  he  professes,  in  order  that  he  may 
convince  himself  that  that  valuation  of  what  is  good  and 
what  bad,  what  praiseworthy  and  what  disgraceful,  by 
which  he  is  guided  in  life  from  inertia,  directly  contra- 
dicts his  whole  world  conception. 

A  man  of  our  time  need  but  for  a  minute,  renouncing 
his  life  which  goes  on  from  inertia,  look  at  it  from  one 
side  and  subject  it  to  the  valuation  which  flows  from  his 
whole  world  conception,  in  order  to  become  frightened  at 
that  determination  of  his  whole  life  which  results  from 
his  world  conception. 

Let  us  take  as  an  example  a  young  man  (in  young  men 
the  energy  of  life  is  stronger  and  self-consciousness  more 
hazy)  from  the  rich  classes,  professing  any  views  what- 
ever. Every  good  young  man  considers  it  a  shame  not  to 
help  an  old  man,  a  child,  a  woman ;  he  considers  it  a 
shame  in  a  common  affair  to  subject  to  danger  the  life 
or  health  of  another  man,  and  himself  to  avoid  it.  Every- 
body considers  it  a  shame  and  monstrous  to  do  what 
Schuyler  tells  the  Kirgizes  do  in  time  of  a  storm,  to  send 
the  women,  both  young  and  old,  out  into  the  storm  to 
hold  the  corners  of  the  tent,  while  they  themselves 
remain  sitting  in  the  tent  and  drinking  kumys ;  every- 
body considers  it  a  shame  to  compel  a  feeble  man  to 
work  for  him ;  a  still  greater  shame  during  a  danger, 
on  a  burning  ship  for  example,  for  the  strongest  to  push 
aside  the  weaker  and,  leaving  them  in  danger,  to  be  the 
first  to  climb  into  a  life-saving  boat,  and  so  forth.  All 
this  they  consider  shameful  and  they  will  never  do  that  in 


328  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

certain  exclusive  conditions ;  but  in  every-day  life  just 
such  acts  and  even  much  worse  acts  are  hidden  from 
them  by  the  offence,  and  they  continue  to  do  them. 

They  need  but  stop  and  think,  in  order  that  they  may 
see  and  be  horrified. 

The  young  man  puts  on  a  fresh  shirt  every  day.  Who 
washes  it  at  the  river  ?  A  woman,  no  matter  in  what 
position  she  may  be,  who  is  old  enough  to  be  the  young 
man's  grandmother  or  mother,  and  who  often  is  sick. 
What  does  this  young  man  himself  call  him  who,  from 
mere  wantonness  to  change  his  shirt,  which  is  clean  as  it 
is,  sends  it  to  be  washed  by  a  woman  who  is  old  enough 
to  be  his  mother  ? 

The  young  man  keeps  horses  for  the  sake  of  foppish- 
ness, and  they  are  trained  in  at  the  risk  of  his  life  by  a 
man  who  is  old  enough  to  be  his  father  or  grandfather, 
while  the  young  man  mounts  them  only  when  all  danger 
is  past.  What  will  this  young  man  call  him  who,  get- 
ting himself  out  of  the  way,  puts  another  man  in  a 
dangerous  position  and  makes  use  of  this  risk  for  his  own 
pleasure  ? 

But  the  whole  hfe  of  the  wealthy  classes  is  composed 
of  a  series  of  such  acts.  Unenduringly  hard  work  of  old 
men,  children,  and  women,  and  acts  performed  by  others 
at  the  peril  of  their  lives,  not  that  we  may  be  able  to 
work,  l)ut  for  our  lust,  fill  our  whole  Hfe.  A  fisherman 
is  drowned  v/hile  catching  fish  for  us ;  laundresses  catch 
colds  and  die ;  blacksmiths  grow  blind ;  factory  hands  get 
sick  and  are  ruined  by  the  machinery  ;  woodehoppers  are 
crushed  by  trees ;  thatchers  fall  down  from  roofs  and  are 
killed  ;  seamstresses  become  consumptive.  All  real  work 
is  done  with  the  loss  and  peril  of  life.  It  is  impossible 
to  conceal  and  not  see  this.  There  is  one  salvation  in 
this  situation,  one  way  out  from  it,  and  this  is,  for  a  man 
of  our  time,  in  accordance  with  his  own  conception  of  the 
world,  not  to   call  himself  a  rascal  and  a  coward,  who 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN  ?  329 

shoulders  the  labour  and  the  peril  of  life  upon  others,  — 
to  take  from  people  only  what  is  necessary  for  life  and 
for  himself  to  bear  the  real  labour  with  the  loss  and  peril 
of  his  life. 

The  time  will  soon  come,  and  it  is  already  at  hand, 
when  it  will  be  a  disgrace  and  a  shame  to  eat  not  only 
a  dinner  of  five  courses,  served  by  lackeys,  but  also  one 
that  is  not  cooked  by  the  hosts  themselves ;  when  it  will 
be  a  shame  to  drive  fast  horses  and  even  in  a  hack,  so 
long  as  one  has  legs ;  in  week-days  to  put  on  garments, 
shoes,  and  gloves  in  which  it  is  impossiljle  to  work ;  to 
play  on  a  piano  costing  twelve  hundred  roubles,  or  even 
fifty  roubles,  when  others,  strangers,  are  working  for  me ; 
to  feed  milk  and  white  bread  to  the  dogs,  when  there  are 
people  who  have  no  bread  and  no  milk ;  to  burn  lamps 
and  candles  at  which  people  do  not  work,  to  make  fires 
in  stoves,  in  which  they  do  not  cook  food,  when  there  are 
people  who  have  no  illumination  and  no  fuel.  We  are 
inevitably  and  rapidly  marching  to  such  a  view.  We 
are  already  standing  on  the  borderland  of  this  new  life, 
and  the  establishment  of  this  new  view  of  life  is  a  matter 
of  public  opinion.  The  public  opinion  which  confirms 
such  a  view  on  life  is  being  rapidly  worked  out. 

Women  make  public  opinion,  and  women  are  in  our 
time  particularly  strong. 


CHAPTER   XL. 

As  it  says  in  the  Bible,  man  is  given  the  law  of  labour, 
and  woman  the  law  of  childbirth ;  although  we,  accord- 
ing to  our  science,  avons  change  tout  ga,  the  law  has 
remained  as  unchanged  for  man  and  for  woman  as  the 
liver  is  in  its  old  place,  and  a  departure  from  it  is  as 
much  as  ever  punished  by  inevitable  death. 

The  only  difference  is  this,  that  for  man,  for  all  in  gen- 
eral, the  departure  from  the  law  is  punished  by  death  in 
such  a  near  future  that  it  may  be  called  the  present, 
while  for  woman  the  departure  from  the  law  is  punished 
in  a  more  remote  future.  The  common  departure  from 
the  law  by  men  destroys  men  at  once ;  the  departure  of 
all  women  destroys  the  men  of  the  next  generation,  but 
the  departure  of  some  men  and  women  does  not  destroy 
the  human  race,  but  deprives  only  those  who  have 
departed  of  man's  rational  nature. 

Men's  departure  from  the  law  began  long  ago  in  those 
classes  which  could  exert  violence  on  others  and,  spread- 
ing all  the  time,  has  lasted  down  to  our  own  time  and  in 
our  time  has  reached  a  point  of  madness,  of  an  ideal 
which  consists  in  the  departure  from  the  law,  an  ideal 
expressed  by  Prince  Blokhin  and  shared  by  Pienan  and 
all  the  cultured  world,  —  that  machines  will  do  the  work, 
and  men  will  be  enjoying  bundles  of  nerves. 

There  has  hardly  existed  any  women's  departure  from 
the  law.  It  found  its  expression  in  prostitution  and  in 
the  frequent  crimes  of  the  killing  of  the  foetus.  The 
women  of  the  circle  of  wealthy  men  fulfilled  their  law, 
when  the  men  did  not  fulfil  theirs,  and  so  the  women 

S30 


WHAT   SHALL   WE   DO   THEN?  331 

became  stronger  and  continue  to  rule,  and  must  rule,  the 
men  who  have  departed  from  the  law,  and,  therefore, 
have  lost  their  reason. 

They  generally  say  that  woman  (the  Parisian  woman, 
generally  the  childless  woman)  has  become  so  fascinating, 
by  making  use  of  all  the  means  of  civilization,  that  she 
has  by  means  of  this  fascination  taken  possession  of  man. 
That  is  not  only  untrue,  but  the  very  opposite  is  the  fact. 
It  is  not  the  childless  woman  who  has  taken  possession 
of  the  man,  but  the  mother  who  has  fulfilled  her  law, 
while  man  did  not  fulfil  his. 

But  the  woman  who  becomes  artificially  childless  and 
fascinates  man  with  her  shoulders  and  looks  is  not  the 
woman  who  rules  man,  but  a  woman  debauched  by  man, 
who  has  descended  to  the  level  of  the  debauched  man,  a 
woman  who,  like  him,  has  departed  from  the  law,  and  so, 
like  him,  loses  every  meaning  of  life. 

From  this  mistake  results  that  remarkable  stupidity 
which  is  called  women's  rights. 

The  formula  of  these  women's  rights  is  like  this :  "  Oh, 
you  man,"  says  the  woman,  "  have  departed  from  your 
law  of  real  work,  and  you  want  us  to  bear  the  brunt  of 
the  real  work.  Yes,  if  that  is  so,  we  shall  know  how  like 
you  to  do  that  semblance  of  work  which  you  do  in  banks, 
ministries,  universities,  academies,  studies,  and  we  want, 
like  you,  under  the  form  of  the  division  of  labour,  to 
make  use  of  the  labour  of  others  and  live  gratifying  our 
whims  only." 

This  they  say,  and  they  show  in  fact  that  they  know 
as  well,  if  not  better,  than  the  men  how  to  do  this  sem- 
blance of  work. 

The  so-called  woman  question  arose,  and  could  have 
arisen  only  among  men  who  have  departed  from  the  law 
of  true  work. 

We  need  only  to  return  to  it,  and  this  question  will 
not  exist. 


332  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

Having  her  own,  unquestionable,  inevitable  work, 
woman  can  never  demand  the  superfluous,  false  work  of 
the  men  of  the  rich  classes.  Not  one  woman  of  a  real 
workman  will  demand  the  right  to  participate  m  his 
labour,  whether  in  the  mines  or  in  the  field.  She  could 
demand  a  participation  in  the  imaginary  labour  alone  of 
the  men  of  wealthy  classes. 

The  woman  of  our  circle  has  been  stronger  than  man, 
and  even  now  is  stronger,  not  by  her  fascination,  not  by 
her  agility  to  do  the  same  Pharisaical  semblance  of  work 
as  men,  but  because  she  has  not  come  out  from  under 
the  law,  because  she  has,  at  the  peril  of  her  life,  with  the 
tension  of  her  uttermost  strength,  borne  that  real,  true 
labour  from  which  the  man  of  the  wealthy  classes  has 
emancipated  himself. 

But  within  my  memory  there  began  a  woman's  de- 
parture from  the  law,  that  is,  her  fall,  and  within  my 
memory  it  has  been  growing  more  and  more. 

Having  lost  the  law,  woman  has  come  to  believe  that 
her  strength  lies  in  the  fascination  of  her  charms,  or  in 
the  agility  of  the  Pharisaical  semblance  of  mental  la- 
bour. 

Children  interfere  with  either.  And  so,  with  the  aid 
of  science  (science  is  always  prepared  for  everything 
abominable),  it  has  happened  within  my  memory  that 
among  the  wealthy  classes  there  have  appeared  dozens 
of  means  for  the  destruction  of  the  foetus,  and  instruments 
for  the  destruction  of  childbirth  have  become  a  usual 
appurtenance  of  the  toilet ;  and  so  the  women-mothers  of 
the  wealthy  classes,  who  had  held  the  power  in  their 
hands,  are  letting  it  out  in  order  not  to  fall  behind  the 
street-walkers  and  to  become  like  them. 

The  evil  has  become  widely  disseminated,  and  with 
every  day  spreads  farther  and  farther,  and  soon  it  will 
embrace  all  the  women  of  the  wealthy  classes,  and  then 
they  will  be  equal  with  the  men,  and  with  them  will  lose 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  33 


o 


the  rational  meaning  of  life,  and  then  there  will  no  longer 
be  any  return  for  that  class.     But  there  is  still  time. 

However,  there  are  still  more  women  than  men  who 
fulfil  their  law,  and  so  there  still  are  among  them  rational 
beings,  and  so  the  possibility  of  salvation  is  stiU  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  women  of  our  circle. 

Oh,  if  these  women  comprehended  their  significance 
and  their  strength,  and  used  it  in  the  work  of  saving 
their  husbands,  brothers,  and  children,  in  saving  all  men  ! 

Women,  mothers,  of  the  wealthy  classes  !  The  salva- 
tion of  the  men  of  our  class  from  the  evils  they  suffer 
from  is  only  in  your  hands  !  Not  the  women  who  are 
busy  with  their  waists,  bustles,  hair-dressing,  and  fasci- 
nation for  men,  and  against  their  will,  by  oversight,  in 
despair  bring  forth  children  and  turn  them  over  to  wet- 
nurses,  nor  those  who  attend  all  kinds  of  lectures  and 
talk  of  psychomotor  centres  and  differentiation,  and  also 
try  to  free  themselves  from  bearing  children,  in  order  not 
to  have  any  obstacle  in  their  dulling  of  sensibilities, 
which  they  call  development,  but  those  in  whose  hands, 
more  than  in  those  of  anybody  else,  lies  the  salvation  of 
the  men  of  our  class  from  the  calamities  which  are 
overwhelming  them.  You,  women  and  mothers,  who 
consciously  submit  to  the  law  of  God,  you  alone  in  our 
unfortunate,  monstrous  circle,  which  has  lost  the  human 
semblance,  know  the  whole  real  meaning  of  life  according 
to  God's  will.  You  alone  can  by  your  example  show  to 
men  that  happiness  of  life  in  the  submission  to  the  will 
of  God,  of  which  they  deprive  themselves.  You  alone 
know  those  raptures  and  joys  which  take  hold  of  your 
whole  being,  and  that  bliss  which  is  predetermined  for 
man  who  does  not  depart  from  the  law  of  God.  You 
know  the  happiness  of  love  for  your  husbands,  a  happi- 
ness which  does  not  come  to  an  end,  nor  break  off,  like 
all  others,  but  forms  the  beginning  of  a  new  happiness  of 
love  for  the  babe.     You  alone  know,  when  you  are  simple 


334       WHAT  SHALL  WE  DO  THEK  ? 

and  submissive  to  the  will  of  God,  not  that  playful,  parade 
work  in  uniforms  and  illuminated  halls,  which  the  men 
of  your  circle  call  work,  but  that  true  work  which  God 
has  intended  for  men,  and  you  know  the  true  rewards  for 
it  and  the  bliss  which  it  gives. 

You  know  this,  when  after  the  joys  of  love  you  with 
agitation,  fear,  and  hope  wait  for  that  agonizing  state  of 
pregnancy,  which  will  make  you  sick  for  nine  months, 
and  will  bring  you  to  the  brink  of  death  and  to  in- 
tolerable sufferings  and  pains ;  you  know  the  conditions 
of  true  labour,  when  with  joy  you  await  the  approach 
and  intensification  of  the  most  terrible  agonies,  after 
which  there  comes  bliss  which  is  known  to  you  alone. 

You  know  this,  when  immediately  after  these  pains 
you  without  rest,  without  interruption,  pass  over  to 
another  series  of  labour  and  of  sufferings,  to  nursing, 
when  you  at  once  reject  and  submit  to  your  duty, 
to  your  feeling,  the  strongest  human  necessity,  that  of 
sleep  (which,  according  to  the  proverb,  is  dearer  than 
father  and  mother),  and  for  months  and  years  at  a  time 
do  not  sleep  through  a  single  night,  and  frequently  stay 
awake  whole  nights  and  with  benumbed  arms  walk  about 
and  rock  your  sick  babe,  who  is  tearing  your  heart 
asunder. 

And  when  you  do  all  this,  unapproved  and  unseen  by 
any  one,  expecting  no  praise  and  no  reward  from  any  one, 
when  you  do  this  not  as  an  exploit,  but  as  the  servant  of 
the  gospel  parable  who  comes  back  from  the  field,  think- 
ing that  you  have  but  done  what  is  right,  you  know 
what  is  the  false  parade  work  for  people  and  what  the 
real  work  for  the  fulfilment  of  God's  will,  the  indications 
of  which  you  feel  in  your  heart. 

You  know  that,  if  you  are  a  real  mother,  it  is  not 
enough  that  no  one  has  seen  your  labour  and  has  praised 
you  for  it,  and  all  have  merely  found  that  that  was  the 
way  it  ought   to  have  been,  but  that  those   for  whom 


WHAT    SHALL   WE   DO    THEN?  335 

you  have  laboured  will  not  only  fail  to  thank  you,  but 
also  frequently  torment  and  reproach  you,  —  and  with  the 
next  baby  you  do  the  same  again  :  again  you  suffer,  again 
you  endure  the  unseen,  terrible  labour,  and  again  you  do 
not  await  any  reward  from  any  one,  and  feel  the  same 
satisfaction. 

In  your  hands,  if  you  are  such  a  woman,  must  be  the 
power  over  men,  and  in  your  hands  is  salvation.  With 
every  day  your  number  is  diminishing :  some  are  busy 
fascinating  men  and  becoming  street-walkers ;  others  are 
busy  competing  with  men  in  their  false,  trilling  affairs ; 
others  again,  even  before  becoming  untrue  to  their  calling, 
in  their  consciousness  already  renounce  it :  they  perform 
all  the  exploits  of  the  woman  as  mother,  but  they  do  so 
by  accident,  with  murmurs,  with  envy  toward  the  free 
women  who  do  not  bear  children,  and  they  deprive  them- 
selves of  the  only  reward  for  them,  —  of  the  inner 
consciousness  of  the  fulfilment  of  God's  will,  —  and,  in- 
stead of  satisfaction,  suffer  from  that  which  forms  their 
happiness. 

We  are  enmeshed  in  our  false  life,  we  the  men  of 
our  circle,  we  have  all  of  us,  to  a  person,  so  lost  the 
meaning  of  life  that  there  is  no  distinction  between  us. 
Having  rolled  the  whole  burden,  the  whole  danger  of 
life,  on  the  necks  of  others,  we  are  unable  to  call  our- 
selves by  our  real  name,  which  befits  people  who  cause 
others  to  perish  in  our  place  for  the  purpose  of  earning  a 
living,  —  scoundrels,  cowards. 

But  among  women  there  still  exists  a  distinction. 
There  are  women  who  are  human  beings,  women  who 
represent  the  highest  manifestation  of  man,  and  women 
who  are  whores.  This  distinction  will  be  made  by 
future  generations,  and  we  cannot  help  making  it  our- 
selves. 

Every  woman,  no  matter  how  she  may  be  dressed, 
what  she  may  call  herself,  or  how  refined  she  may  be,  is 


336  WHAT   SHALL    WE   DO    THEN? 

a  whore  if  she  does  not  abstain  from  sexual  intercourse, 
and  yet  abstains  from  childbirth. 

And  no  matter  how  fallen  a  woman  may  be,  if  she 
consciously  abandons  herself  to  bearing  children,  she  per- 
forms the  best,  the  highest  act  of  life,  in  that  she  is  doing 
God's  will,  and  she  has  no  one  above  her. 

If  you  are  such,  you  will  not  say  after  two,  nor  after 
twenty  children,  that  it  is  enough  to  bear  children,  just  as 
a  labourer  of  fifty  years  will  not  say  that  it  is  enough  for 
him  to  work,  so  loug  as  he  continues  to  eat  and  sleep, 
and  his  muscles  demand  for  work  ;  if  you  are  such,  you 
will  not  throw  your  care  of  nursing  and'  tending  on  the 
children  on  another  ruother,  just  as  a  labourer  will  not 
permit  a  stranger  to  finish  his  work  which  he  has  begun 
and  has  almost  finished,  because  into  this  work  you  place 
your  whole  hfe,  and  so  your  life  is  fuller  and  happier  in 
proportion  as  your  work  is  greater. 

When  you  are  such,  —  and  there  are  such,  luckily  for 
men,  —  the  same  law  of  the  fulfilment  of  God's  will,  by 
which  you  are  guided  in  your  life,  will  be  applied  by  you 
to  the  life  of  your  husband,  and  your  children,  and  your 
near  relatives. 

If  you  are  such  a  woman  and  know  from  your  own 
case  that  only  a  self-sacrificing,  invisible,  unrewarded 
labour  at  the  peril  of  life  and  to  the  last  limits  of  tension, 
for  the  lives  of  others,  is  that  calling  of  man  which  gives 
him  satisfaction  and  strength,  then  you  will  make  the 
same  demands  on  others,  encourage  your  husband  to 
the  same  work,  measure  and  esteem  the  worth  of  men 
by  the  same  work,  and  prepare  your  children  to  do  the 
same  work. 

Only  that  mother  who  looks  upon  childbirth  as  a  dis- 
agreeable incident,  and  upon  her  pleasures  of  love,  com- 
forts of  life,  of  culture,  of  society  as  upon  the  meaning  of 
life,  will  bring  up  her  children  to  have  as  much  pleasure 
as  possible  and  to  enjoy  them  as  much  as  possible,  and 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  337 

will  feed  them  on  sweet  things,  will  dress  and  artificially 
amuse  them,  and  will  teach  them,  not  what  would  make 
them  capable  of  self-sacrificing  man's  and  woman's  work, 
which  is  connected  with  peril  of  life  and  the  uttermost  ten- 
sion, but  what  will  free  them  from  this  labour,  — everything 
which  will  give  them  diplomas  and  the  possibility  to  keep 
away  from  work.  Only  such  a  woman,  who  has  lost  the 
meaning  of  Kfe,  will  sympathize  with  that  deceptive,  false 
male  labour  which  enables  her  husband,  who  has  freed 
himself  from  human  duties,  to  enjoy  with  her  the  labours 
of  others.  Only  such  a  woman  will  choose  the  same 
kind  of  a  husband  for  her  daughter  and  will  value  peo- 
ple not  for  what  they  are  in  themselves,  but  for  what 
is  connected  with  them,  for  their  position,  money,  and 
knowledge  how  to  make  use  of  the  labours  of  others. 

But  a  real  mother,  who  in  fact  knows  the  will  of  God, 
will  prepare  her  children  to  do  this  will  also.  For  such 
a  mother  it  will  be  a  suffering  to  see  her  overfed,  pam- 
pered, dressed-up  baby,  because  all  this,  she  knows, 
makes  harder  the  fulfilment  of  God's  will,  as  it  is  known 
to  her. 

Such  a  mother  will  not  teach  her  children  what  will  give 
them  the  possibihty  of  the  offence  of  freeing  themselves 
from  labour,  but  what  will  help  them  to  bear  the  work 
of  hfe.  She  will  not  have  to  ask  what  to  teach  them,  for 
what  to  prepare  them :  she  knows  what  the  calling  of 
men  consists  in,  and  so  she  knows  what  to  teach  her 
children  and  for  what  to  prepare  them.  Such  a  woman 
will  not  only  refrain  from  encouraging  her  husband  in 
his  deceptive,  false  work,  which  has  for  its  aim  nothing 
but  the  exploitation  of  the  labour  of  others,  but  will  also 
look  with  disgust  and  horror  upon  such  an  activity,  which 
serves  as  a  double  offence  for  her  children.  Such  a 
woman  will  not  choose  a  husband  for  her  daughter  on 
account  of  the  whiteness  of  his  hands  and  refinement 
of  his  manners,  but,  knowing  full  well  what  work  and 


338  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO   THEN? 

what  deception  are,  will,  beginning  with  her  husband, 
always  and  at  all  times  respect  and  appreciate  in  men 
and  demand  of  them  true  work  with  loss  and  peril,  and 
will  despise  that  false,  parade  work,  which  has  for  its  aim 
the  freeing  of  oneself  from  true  work. 

Let  not  the  woman,  who,  renouncing  woman's  calling, 
wants  to  enjoy  her  rights,  say  that  such  a  view  of  life  is 
impossible  for  a  mother,  that  a  mother  is  too  closely  con- 
nected by  love  with  her  children  to  be  able  to  refuse 
them  sweetmeats,  amusements,  dresses;  not  to  be  afraid 
for  her  unprovided  children,  if  her  husband  has  no  fortune 
or  no  secure  position,  and  not  to  be  afraid  for  the  fate  of 
the  marriageable  daughters  and  sons,  if  they  have  received 
no  education. 

All  this  is  an  untruth,  a  most  glaring  untruth ! 

The  true  mother  will  never  say  that.  You  cannot 
refrain  from  the  desire  to  give  your  children  candy,  and 
toys,  and  taking  them  to  the  circus  ?  But  you  do  not 
give  them  spurge-laurel,  do  not  allow  them  to  get  into  a 
l)oat  by  themselves,  and  do  not  take  them  to  a  caf^ 
chantant.  Why  can  you  refrain  yourself  there,  and 
cannot  do  so  here  ? 

Because  you  are  telling  an  untruth. 

You  say  that  you  love  your  children  so  much  that  you 
are  afraid  for  their  lives,  that  you  are  afraid  of  hunger 
and  cold,  and  so  value  highly  the  security  which  is  fur- 
nished you  by  your  husband's  position,  which  you  recog- 
nize as  irregular. 

You  are  so  much  afraid  of  those  future  accidents  and 
calamities  for  your  children,  which  are  still  far  removed 
and  doubtful,  that  you  encourage  your  husband  in  what 
you  do  not  recognize  the  justice  of;  but  what  are  you 
doing  now  in  the  present  conditions  of  your  life  to  save 
your  "children  from  the  unfortunate  accidents  of  your 
present  life  ? 

Do  you  pass  a  large  part  of  the  day  with  your  cliil- 


WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN?  339 

dren  ?     You  do  well  if  you  give  them  one-tenth  of  your 
time. 

The  remaining  time  they  are  in  the  hands  of  hired 
strangers  who  are  frequently  taken  from  the  street,  or  in 
institutions,  abandoned  to  the  perils  of  physical  and  moral 
infections. 

Your  children  eat  and  receive  nourishment.  Who 
prepares  the  dinner,  and  out  of  what  is  it  prepared  ?  As 
a  rule  you  do  not  know.  By  whom  are  moral  concepts 
instilled  in  them  ?  You  do  not  know  this,  either.  So  do 
not  say  that  you  are  suffering  evil  for  the  good  of  your 
children,  —  that  is  untrue.  You  are  doing  wrong,  because 
you  love  it. 

A  true  mother,  who  sees  in  childbirth  and  the  bringing 
up  of  her  children  her  self-sacrificing  calling  of  hfe  and 
fulfilment  of  God's  will,  ^\ill  not  say  so. 

She  will  not  say  so,  because  she  knows  that  it  is  not 
her  business  to  make  of  her  children  what  she  or  the 
reigning  tendency  may  wish,  that  the  children,  that  is, 
the  future  generations,  are  the  greatest  and  holiest  thing 
which  is  given  men  to  see  in  reality,  and  that  her  minis-  • 
tration  with  her  whole  being  to  this  holiness  is  her  life. 

She  knows  herself,  being  constantly  between  hfe  and 
death,  and  hving  a  barely  glimmering  life,  that  life 
and  death  are  not  her  busiuess,  that  her  business  is  to 
minister  to  life,  and  so  she  will  not  seek  any  distant 
paths  of  this  ministration,  but  will  only  keep  from  de- 
parting from  those  that  are  near. 

Such  a  mother  will  herself  bear  children  and  nurse 
them,  will  above  all  else  herself  feed  her  children  and 
prepare  food  for  them,  and  sew,  and  wash,  and  teach  her 
children,  and  sleep  and  talk  with  them,  because  in  this 
she  assumes  her  work  of  life  to  consist.  She  knows  that 
the  security  of  any  hfe  is  in  work  and  in  the  ability  to 
do  it,  and  so  will  not  seek  for  her  children's  security  in 
her  husband's  money,  and  in  the  diplomas  of  her  children, 


340  WHAT    SHALL    WE    DO    THEN? 

but  will  educate  in  them  the  same  self-sacrificing  fulfil- 
ment of  God's  will  which  she  knows  in  herself,  —  the 
ability  to  endure  labour  with  the  loss  and  the  peril  of 
life.  Such  a  mother  will  not  ask  others  what  she  has 
to  do ;  she  will  know  everything  and  will  not  be  afraid 
of  anything,  and  she  will  always  be  calm,  because  she 
will  know  that  she  has  fulfilled  everything  which  she  is 
called  to  do. 

If  there  can  be  any  doubt  for  a  man  and  for  a  childless 
woman  as  to  the  path  on  which  is  to  be  the  fulfilment  of 
God's  will,  for  a  mother  this  path  is  firmly  and  clearly 
defined,  and  if  she  has  humbly  fulfilled  it  in  the  sim- 
phcity  of  her  soul,  she  stands  on  the  highest  point  of 
perfection  which  a  human  being  can  reach,  and  becomes 
for  all  men  that  complete  sample  of  the  fulfilment  of 
God's  will,  toward  which   all   men   strive   at   all  times. 

Only  a  mother  can  before  her  death  calmly  say  to 
Him  who  has  sent  her  into  the  world,  and  to  Him  whom 
she  has  served  by  bringing  forth  and  educating  her  chil- 
dren, whom  she  loves  more  than  herself,  after  she  has 
done  her  appointed  task  in  serving  Him :  "  To-day  dost 
Thou  release  Thy  slave."  But  this  is  that  highest  per- 
fection toward  wliich,  as  toward  the  highest  good,  all  men 
strive. 

It  is  such  women,  who  have  fulfilled  their  woman's 
calling,  that  rule  the  ruhng  men  and  serve  as  a  guiding 
star  to  men;  such  women  establish  public  opinion  and 
prepare  new  generations  of  men;  and  so  these  women 
have  in  their  hands  the  highest  power,  the  power  of 
saving  people  from  the  existing  and  menacing  evils  of  our 
time. 

Yes,  women  and  mothers,  in  your  hands,  more  than  in 
any  other,  is  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

February  14, 1886. 


ON    THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS 

1882 


ON    THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS 


The  census  has  a  scientific  purpose.  The  census  is  a 
sociological  investigation.  But  the  aim  of  sociology  is 
men's  happiness.  This  science  and  its  method  ditfers 
markedly  from  all  the  other  sciences. 

Its  peculiarity  consists  in  this,  that  the  sociological 
investigations  are  not  carried  on  by  the  learned  in  their 
cabinets,  observatories,  and  laboratories,  but  by  two  thou- 
sand people  from  society.  Another  peculiarity  of  it  is 
this,  that  the  investigations  of  other  sciences  are  not 
carried  on  on  hving  men,  while  here  they  are.  A  third 
peculiarity  of  it  is  this,  that  the  aim  of  any  other  science 
is  knowledge,  wliile  here  it  is  the  good  of  men.  The 
nebular  spots  may  be  investigated  by  one  man,  but  here 
two  thousand  people  are  needed.  The  purpose  of  the 
investigation  of  the  nebular  spots  is  to  find  out  everything 
about  the  nebular  spots ;  the  aim  of  the  investigation  of 
the  population  is  to  deduce  laws  of  sociology  and  on  the 
basis  of  these  laws  better  to  establish  the  lives  of  men. 
It  makes  no  difference  to  the  nebular  spots  whether  they 
are  investigated  or  not,  and  they  are  in  no  hurry  and  will 
be  in  no  hurry  for  a  long  time  to  come ;  but  it  is  not  all 
the  same  for  the  inhabitants  of  Moscow,  especially  for 
those  unfortunates  who  form  the  most  interesting  subject 
of  the  science  of  sociology. 

The  census-taker  comes  to  a  lodging-house,  and  he  finds 

343 


344  ON    THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS 

in  the  basement  a  man  who  is  dying  of  insufficient  nour- 
ishment, and  asks  him  pohtely  for  his  calhng,  name, 
patronymic,  and  kind  of  occupation,  and,  after  some  hesi- 
tation as  to  whether  he  should  enter  him  in  his  hst  as 
living,  he  enters  him  and  goes  on. 

Thus  will  two  thousand  young  men  walk  about.  That 
is  not  good. 

Science  does  its  work,  and  society,  which  in  the  persons 
of  the  two  thousand  men  is  called  to  cooperate  with 
science,  must  do  its  work.  The  statistician,  who  makes 
his  inferences  from  figures,  may  be  indifferent  to  people, 
but  we,  the  census-takers,  who  see  these  people  and  have 
no  scientific  infatuation,  cannot  help  but  have  a  human 
interest  in  them.  Science  does  its  work,  and,  as  regards 
its  aims  in  the  distant  future,  does  a  work  which  is  useful 
and  necessary  for  us. 

For  the  men  of  science  it  is  possible  to  say  calmly  that 
in  the  year  1882  there  are  so  many  paupers,  so  many 
prostitutes,  so  many  children  without  attention.  It  may 
say  so  calmly  and  proudly,  because  it  knows  that  the 
assertion  of  this  fact  leads  to  the  elucidation  of  socio- 
logical laws,  and  that  the  elucidation  of  sociological  laws 
leads  to  the  improved  state  of  society.  But  how  would 
it  be,  if  we,  the  laymen,  should  say :  "  You  are  perishing 
in  debauchery,  you  are  starving,  you  are  wasting  away, 
you  are  killing  one  another ;  but  let  not  that  grieve  you : 
when  all  of  you  shall  have  perished  and  hundreds  of 
thousands  like  you,  then,  perhaps,  science  will  arrange 
everything  beautifully."  For  the  man  of  science  the 
census  has  its  interest :  for  us  it  has  an  entirely  different 
interest.  For  society  the  interest  and  significance  of  the 
census  consists  in  this,  that  it  gives  it  a  mirror  in  which, 
willy  nilly,  society  and  each  of  us  can  see  himself. 

The  figures  and  the  deductions  will  be  the  mirror.  It 
is  possible  not  to  read  them,  just  as  it  is  possible  to  turn 
away  from  a   mirror.     It  is  possible  to  cast  a  passing 


ON   THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS  345 

glance  into  the  mirror,  or  to  look  into  it  from  near  by. 
To  take  the  census,  as  a  thousand  men  are  doing  now,  is 
to  take  a  close  look  into  the  mirror. 

What  is  the  census  which  is  taking  place  now  for  us 
Muscovites  who  are  not  men  of  science  ?  It  is  two  things. 
In  the  first  place,  that  we  shall  certainly  find  out  that 
among  us,  among  tens  of  thousands  of  men  spending  tens 
of  thousands  of  roubles,  there  live  tens  of  thousands  of 
men  without  bread,  clothing,  or  shelter;  in  the  second 
place,  that  our  brothers  and  sons  will  go  to  see  this  and 
calmly  record  in  columns  how  many  there  are  that  are 
dying  from  hunger  and  cold. 

Both  things  are  very  bad. 

All  cry  about  the  flimsiness  of  our  social  structure, 
about  its  exclusive  condition,  about  its  revolutionary 
mood.  AVhere  is  the  root  of  everything  ?  To  what  do 
the  revolutionists  point  ?  To  the  poverty,  the  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth.  To  what  do  the  conservatives 
point  ?  To  the  decay  of  moral  foundations.  If  the  opin- 
ion of  the  revolutionists  is  correct,  what  must  we  do  ? 
Diminish  poverty  and  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth. 
If  the  opinion  of  the  conservatives  is  correct,  that  all  the 
evil  is  due  to  the  decay  of  moral  principles,  what  can  be 
more  immoral  and  corrupt  than  the  consciously  indiffer- 
ent contemplation  of  human  misfortunes  with  the  mere 
purpose  of  recording  them  ?  What  must  we  do,  then  ? 
We  must  add  to  the  census  the  work  of  a  brotherly  com- 
munion of  the  rich,  the  leisurely,  and  the  enlightened  with 
the  poor,  the  oppressed,  and  the  ignorant. 

Science  is  doing  its  work,  —  let  us  do  our  work.  This 
is  what  we  will  do.  In  the  first  place,  we,  who  are  busy 
with  the  census,  the  managers,  census-takers,  will  form 
for  ourselves  a  clear  idea  of  what  we  are  doing,  —  we  will 
gain  a  clear  idea  as  to  why  and  over  what  we  are  making 
the  investigations  :  over  men,  and  that  men  may  be  happy. 
No  matter  how  a  man  may  look  at  life,  he  will  agree  that 


346  ON   THE   MOSCOW    CENSUS 

there  is  nothing  more  important  than  human  life,  and 
that  there  is  no  more  important  business  than  the  removal 
of  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  development  of  hfe,  than 
aiding  it. 

In  the  Gospel  we  find  expressed,  with  striking  boldness, 
but  with  definiteness  and  clearness  for  all,  the  thought 
that  the  relations  of  men  to  poverty,  to  human  sufferings, 
is  the  root,  the  foundation  of  everything. 

He  who  clothes  the  naked,  feeds  the  hungry,  and  visits 
the  prisoners  has  clothed  me,  fed  me,  visited  me,  that  is, 
has  done  work  for  what  is  most  important  in  the 
world. 

No  matter  how  a  man  may  look  at  things,  everybody 
knows  that  this  is  the  most  important  business  in  the 
world. 

And  we  must  not  forget  this,  and  permit  any  other 
considerations  to  veil  from  us  the  most  important  busi- 
ness of  our  life.  We  will  record  and  take  the  census,  but 
we  will  not  forget  that,  if  we  meet  a  naked  and  hungry 
man,  it  is  more  important  to  help  him  than  to  attend  to 
the  most  important  investigations  and  discoveries  of  all  the 
possible  sciences,  that,  if  the  question  arose  whether  we 
should  busy  ourselves  with  an  old  woman  who  had  not 
had  anything  to  eat  for  two  days,  or  ruin  the  whole  work 
of  the  census,  we  should  let  the  census  go  to  perdition, 
if  only  we  can  feed  the  old  woman.  The  census-taking 
will  be  longer  and  harder,  but  in  the  quarters  of  the  poor 
we  cannot  pass  by  people  and  merely  record  them,  without 
caring  for  them  or  trying  to  help  them  according  to  our 
strength  and  moral  sensitiveness.  So  much  in  the  first 
place. 

In  the  second  place,  this  is  what  we  ought  to  do ;  we, 
who  are  not  taking  part  in  the  census,  let  us  not  be  angry 
at  being  disturbed ;  let  us  understand  that  this  census  is 
very  useful  for  us ;  that,  if  it  is  not  a  cure,  it  is  at  least 
an  attempt  at  investigating  a  disease,  for  which  we  ought 


ON   THE   MOSCOW   CENSUS  347 

to  be  thankful,  and  which  ought  to  serve  us  as  an  occasion 
for  tiyiug  to  cure  ourselves  a  httle  bit.  Let  us  all,  who 
are  being  recorded,  try  and  make  use  of  the  only  oppor- 
tunity ofi'ered  us  in  ten  years  for  cleauiug  up  a  little  :  let 
us  not  counteract  the  census,  but  help  it,  namely,  in  the 
sense  of  giving  it  not  the  cruel  character  of  a  probing  of 
a  hopeless  patient,  but  that  of  a  cure  and  convalescence. 
Indeed,  here  is  a  singular  chance :  eighty  energetic,  cul- 
tured men,  having  in  hand  two  thousand  young  men  of 
the  same  character,  are  making  the  round  of  the  whole 
of  Moscow,  and  will  not  leave  out  a  single  man  in  Mos- 
cow, without  entering  into  personal  relations  with  him. 
All  the  sores  of  society,  all  the  sores  of  poverty,  debauch- 
ery, ignorance,  —  all  of  them  will  be  laid  bare.  Well, 
shall  we  stop  at  this  ? 

The  census-takers  will  make  the  round  of  Moscow,  will 
indiscriminately  enter  into  their  lists  the  overweening, 
the  satisfied,  and  the  calm,  the  perishing  and  the  ruined, 
and  the  curtain  will  fall.  The  census-takers,  —  our 
brothers  and  sons,  —  the  youths,  will  see  all  this.  They 
will  say,  "  Yes,  our  life  is  very  detestable  and  incurable," 
and  with  this  consciousness  will  continue  to  Hve  with  us, 
expecting  a  remedy  of  the  evil  from  this  or  that  external 
force.  But  the  ruined  will  continue  to  die  in  their  ruin, 
and  the  perishing  will  continue  to  perish.  Xo,  we  had 
better  understand  that  science  has  its  business,  and  we, 
on  the  occasion  of  the  census,  our  own  business,  and  let 
us  not  cover  ourselves  with  the  raised  curtain,  but  let  us 
make  use  of  the  opportunity,  in  order  to  remove  the 
greatest  evil  of  the  dissociation  between  us  and  the  poor, 
and  let  us  establish  a  communion  and  the  business  of 
mending  the  evil,  the  misfortunes,  the  poverty,  and  the 
ignorance,  and  the  still  greater  misfortune,  our  own,  of 
the  indifference  and  aimlessness  of  our  life. 

I  already  hear  the  habitual  remark :  "  All  this  is  very 
nice,  all  this  is  ranting  j  but  tell  us  what  to  do  and  how 


348  ON   THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS 

to  do  it."  Before  telling  what  to  do,  I  must  say  what 
not  to  do.  Above  all,  if  something  sensible  is  to  come  of 
all  this  activity  of  society,  it  is,  in  my  opinion,  necessary 
that  no  society  be  formed,  that  there  be  no  publicity, 
no  collections  of  funds  by  means  of  balls,  bazars,  and 
theatres ;  that  there  be  no  announcements :  "  Prince  A. 
has  contributed  one  thousand  roubles,  and  Honorary  Citi- 
zen B.,  three  thousand  roubles ; "  that  there  be  no  assem- 
blies, no  reports,  and  no  writing,  especially  no  writing ; 
that  there  be  not  even  a  shadow  of  any  institution,  either 
governmental  or  philanthropic. 

In  my  opinion,  this  is  what  we  ought  to  do  at  once : 
first,  all  those  who  agree  with  me  ought  to  go  to  the  man- 
agers, ask  them  to  point  out  the  poorest  districts  in  their 
wards,  the  poorest  tenements,  and  go  with  the  census- 
takers,  on  the  twenty-third,  the  twenty-fourth,  and  the 
twenty-fifth,  through  these  districts,  enter  into  relations 
with  those  who  live  in  them,  and  retain  these  rela- 
tions with  the  people  who  are  in  want  of  aid,  and  work 
with  them. 

Secondly :  the  managers  and  census-takers  are  to  pay 
attention  to  the  denizens  who  demand  assistance,  and 
work  for  them,  and  point  them  out  to  those  who  want 
to  work  for  them.  But  I  shall  be  asked  what  is  meant 
by  working  for  them.  I  shall  answer :  Doing  good  to 
them.  Not  giving  them  money,  but  domg  them  good. 
By  the  words  "  to  do  good  "  people  generally  understand 
giving  money.  But,  according  to  my  opinion,  to  do  good 
and  give  money  not  only  are  not  the  same,  but  are  two 
entirely  different,  and  generally  opposite,  things.  Money 
is  in  itself  an  evil,  and  so  he  who  gives  money  gives  an 
evil.  The  delusion  that  giving  money  means  doing  good 
is  due  to  this,  that  for  the  most  part  a  man  who  does 
good  rids  himself  of  the  evil  and  at  the  same  time  of  his 
money.  And  so  giving  money  is  only  a  sign  that  man  is 
beginning  to  rid  himself  of  evil.     To  do  good  means  to 


ON    THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS  ^149 

do  what  is  good  for  man.  To  find  out  what  is  good  for 
man,  we  must  get  into  human,  that  is,  amicable,  relations 
with  him.  And  so,  to  do  good  it  is  not  money  that  is 
needed,  but,  first  of  all,  the  ability  at  least  for  a  time  to 
renounce  the  conventionalities  of  our  hfe,  not  to  be  afraid 
to  soil  our  boots  and  garments,  nor  to  be  afraid  of  bed- 
bugs and  lice,  nor  of  typhoid,  diphtheria,  or  smallpox  ;  we 
must  be  able  to  sit  down  on  the  cot  of  a  ragged  fellow 
and  talk  with  him  so  intimately  that  he  will  feel  that  the 
talker  respects  and  loves  him,  and  is  not  acting  and  ad- 
miring himself.  That  this  may  be  possible,  a  man  must 
look  for  the  meaning  of  life  outside  himself.  This  is 
what  is  needed  that  there  should  be  the  good,  and  this 
it  is  difficult  to  find. 

Wlien  the  thought  came  to  me  of  helping  in  the  census, 
I  talked  with  a  few  of  the  rich  about  it,  and  I  saw  how 
glad  the  rich  were  of  the  opportunity  of  getting  rid  of 
their  money,  of  those  alien  sins  which  they  shelter  in  their 
hearts.  "  Do  take,  if  you  please,"  they  would  say  to  me, 
"  three  hundred  roubles,  or  five  hundred  roubles,  but  I 
myself  cannot  go  to  those  purlieus."  There  is  no  want 
of  money.  Think  of  Zacchseus,  the  chief  of  the  publicans, 
of  whom  the  Gospel  speaks.  Eemember  how  he,  being 
small,  climbed  a  tree  in  order  to  see  Christ,  and  how  he, 
when  Christ  announced  that  he  was  going  to  his  house, 
understood  only  this,  that  the  master  did  not  extol 
wealth,  and  tumbled  down  from  the  tree  and  started 
home  on  a  run,  in  order  to  prepare  a  reception  for  Christ. 
And,  when  Christ  entered,  the  first  thing  Zaccheeus  an- 
nounced was  that  he  had  given  half  his  fortune  to  the 
poor,  and  that  to  those  whom  he  had  offended  he  would 
give  fourfold.  And  remember  how  we,  reading  the 
Gospel,  hold  this  Zacchseus  in  little  esteem,  and  with 
involuntary  contempt  look  at  this  half  of  his  fortune  and 
fourfold  remuneration.  And  our  feeling  is  right.  Upon 
reflection,  Zacchseus,  it  seems,  did  a  great  thing ;  but  our 


350  ON   THE   MOSCOW    CENSUS 

feeliug  is  correct.  He  had  not  yet  begun  to  do  good :  he 
only  began  to  cleanse  himself  a  little  from  evil.  Christ 
told  him  so.  All  he  told  him  was,  This  day  is  salvation 
come  to  this  house. 

Suppose  the  Moscow  Zacchseuses  should  do  the  same. 
There  would  be  more  than  a  billion  gathered  together. 
Well,  what  would  become  of  it  ?  Nothing.  There  would 
be  even  more  sin,  if  they  proposed  to  distribute  it  among 
the  poor.  It  is  not  money  that  is  needed.  What  is 
needed  is  an  activity  of  self-renunciation  and  men  who 
would  be  willing  to  do  good,  not  by  giving  other  people's 
sins,  money,  but  their  own  labour,  themselves,  their  life. 
Where  are  these  people  ?  Here  they  are,  they  are  walk- 
ing about  Moscow.  They  are  those  student  census-takers. 
I  have  seen  them  write  their  cards.  They  write  in  a  doss- 
house,  on  a  sick  man's  bunk.  "  What  is  your  disease  ? " 
"  Smallpox."  And  such  a  student  does  not  even  frown, 
but  continues  writing.  And  this  he  does  for  the  sake  of 
some  doubtful  science.  What  would  he  do,  if  he  did  this 
for  his  undoubted  personal  good  and  for  the  good  of  all 
people  ? 

Just  as  children  in  a  happy  mood  want  to  laugh  and, 
unable  to  discover  a  cause  for  laughter,  laugh  without 
any  cause,  simply  because  they  feel  happy,  so  these  dear 
youths  sacrifice  themselves.  They  have  not  yet  had  time 
to  find  a  pretext  for  sacrificing  themselves,  and  yet  sacri- 
fice their  attention,  labour,  and  life,  in  order  to  write  the 
cards,  which  may  lead  to  something,  or  not.  What 
would  happen,  if  there  were  something  w'orth  while  ? 
This  something  exists  and  has  existed,  and  it  is  a 
business  for  which  it  is  worth  while  to  lay  down  the 
whole  life  which  there  is  in  man.  This  business  is 
the  brotherly  communion  of  people  with  people,  and  the 
breaking  down  of  those  obstacles  which  people  have 
raised  between  themselves,  in  order  that  the  merriment 
of   the   rich    man    may   not   be   impaired    by   the   wild 


ON    THE    MOSCOW    CENSUS  351 

lamentations  of  bestialized  men  and  by  the  groans  of 
helpless  hunger,  cold,  and  diseases. 

The  census  brings  out  before  the  eyes  of  us,  the  well- 
to-do  and  so-called  cultured  men,  all  that  misery  and 
oppression  which  nestles  in  all  the  nooks  of  Moscow. 
Two  thousand  people  of  our  class,  who  stand  on  the 
highest  round  of  the  ladder,  will  face  thousands  of 
people  who  stand  on  the  lowest  round  of  society.  Let 
us  not  miss  the  opportunity  for  this  communion.  Let  us 
preserve  this  communion  through  these  two  thousand 
people,  and  let  us  use  it  for  the  purpose  of  saving  our- 
selves from  the  aimlessness  and  monstrosity  of  our  life, 
and  of  freeing  the  wronged  from  those  calamities  and  mis- 
fortunes which  do  not  permit  us  sensitive  people  calmly 
to  enjoy  our  joys. 

This  is  what  I  propose:  (1)  all  of. us,  managers  and 
takers  of  the  census,  shall  to  the  business  of  the  census 
add  the  business  of  assistance,  —  of  work  for  the  good  of 
such  men  as  we  meet,  who,  in  our  opinion,  demand  aid ; 
(2)  all  of  us,  managers  and  takers  of  the  census,  shall, 
not  by  the  appointment  from  the  City  Council's  com- 
mittee, but  by  the  prompting  of  our  hearts,  remain  in  our 
places,  that  is,  in  relations  with  the  inhabitants  who 
demand  aid,  and  shall,  after  the  conclusion  of  the  work 
of  the  census,  continue  our  work  of  assistance.  If  I 
have  been  able  to  express  but  a  small  part  of  what  I  feel, 
I  am  sure  that  only  impossibility  will  compel  the  man- 
agers and  the  takers  of  the  census  to  abandon  this  work, 
and  that  others  will  appear  in  place  of  those  who  give 
up  the  work ;  (3)  all  those  inhabitants  of  Moscow  who 
feel  themselves  able  to  work  for  the  needy  shall  join  the 
various  wards  and,  by  the  indications  of  the  census- 
takers  and  managers,  begin  their  activity  at  once  and 
continue  it  in  the  future ;  (4)  all  those  who,  on  account 
of  old  age,  feebleness,  or  other  causes,  cannot  work  them- 
selves amidst  the  needy,  shall  entrust  their  work  to  their 


352  ON   THE   MOSCOW   CENSUS 

young,  strong,  willing  neighbours.  (The  good  is  not  the 
giving  of  money,  —  it  is  a  brotherly  relation  of  roen.  It 
alone  is  needed.) 

No  matter  v/hat  may  come  of  it,  it  is  better  than  what 
is  going  on  at  present. 

Let  the  least  work  be  this,  that  we,  the  takers  and  the 
managers  of  the  census,  shall  distribute  a  hundred  twenty- 
kopek  pieces  among  those  who  have  had  nothing  to  eat ; 
that  will  not  be  a  trifle,  not  so  much  because  the  starving 
will  have  something  to  eat,  as  because  the  takers  and  the 
managers  of  the  census  will  be  in  a  humane  relation  to  a 
hundred  poor  people.  How  are  we  to  figure  out  what 
consequences  will  be  produced  in  the  general  moral  bal- 
ance by  the  fact  that,  instead  of  the  feeling  of  annoyance, 
malice,  envy,  which  we  shall  provoke,  as  we  count  up  the 
hungry,  we  shall  a  .hundred  times  evoke  a  good  sentiment, 
which  will  be  reflected  on  a  second,  a  third  man,  and  will 
in  an  endless  wave  pour  forth  among  the  people  ?  That  is 
a  great  deal. 

Let  there  be  only  this  much,  that  those  of  the  two 
thousand  census-takers  who  did  not  understand  this  be- 
fore will  come  to  understand  that  amidst  misery  it  is  not 
right  to  say,  "  This  is  very  interesting,"  that  a  man's  mis- 
fortune must  not  merely  represent  some  interest  to  a  man. 
Even  that  will  be  good.  Let  there  be  only  this  much, 
that  aid  will  be  furnished  to  all  those  unfortunates,  of 
whom  there  are  not  so  many  in  Moscow  as  I  used  to 
think,  who  can  easily  be  aided  with  money  alone.  Let 
there  be  this,  that  those  labourers  who  have  strayed  into 
Moscow  and  have  sold  their  clothes  to  buy  food,  and  who 
are  unable  to  return  to  the  country,  will  be  sent  home ; 
that  neglected  orphans  will  be  looked  after;  that  en- 
feebled old  paupers,  who  are  living  on  the  charity  of 
fellow  paupers,  will  be  spared  a  death  from  semi-starva- 
tion. (That  is  very  possible.  There  are  not  very  many 
of  them.)     Even  that  will  be  very,  very  much. 


ON  THE  MOSCOW  CENSUS         353 

But  why  shall  we  not  think  and  hope  that  more,  much 
more  will  be  done  ?  Why  shall  we  not  hope  that  we 
shall  partially  do  or  begin  that  real  work,  which  is  no 
longer  done  with  money,  but  with  labour,  —  that  we 
shall  save  enfeebled  drunkards,  uncaught  thieves,  and 
prostitutes  for  whom  salvation  is  possible  ?  Even  if  not 
all  evil  shall  be  remedied,  there  will  be  its  recognition, 
and  we  shall  struggle  against  it  not  with  police  measures, 
but  with  inner  measures,  —  with  the  brotherly  communion 
of  men  who  see  the  evil  against  men  who  do  not  see 
it,  because  they  are  in  it. 

No  matter  what  may  be  done,  it  will  be  much.  But 
why  shall  we  not  hope  that  everything  will  be  done  ? 
Why  can  we  not  hope  that  we  shall  succeed  in  accom- 
phshing  this,  that  in  Moscow  there  will  not  be  a  single 
man  without  clothes,  nor  one  who  is  hungry,  nor  one 
unfortunate  man  who  is  crushed  by  fate,  without  know- 
ing that  he  may  have  brotherly  assistance  ?  What  is 
remarkable  is  not  that  this  should  be,  but  that  it  exists 
side  by  side-  with  our  excess  of  leisure  and  wealth,  and 
that  we  can  live  calmly,  knowing  that  it  exists.  Let  us 
forget  that  in  large  cities  and  in  London  there  is  a  prole- 
tariat, and  let  us  not  say  that  it  must  be  so.  It  must  not 
be,  because  it  is  contrary  to  our  reason  and  to  our  heart, 
and  it  is  impossible,  if  we  are  living  men. 

WTiy  can  we  not  hope  that  we  shall  understand  that 
we  have  not  a  single  obligation,  to  say  nothing  of  a  per- 
sonal obHgation,  for  our  own  sake,  not  any  domestic,  nor 
public,  nor  political,  nor  scientific  obligation,  which  is 
more  important  than  this  ?  Why  can  we  not  hope  that 
we  shall  finally  comprehend  it  ?  Is  it  because  this  would 
be  too  great  a  happiness  ?  Why  can  we  not  think  that 
some  day  men  will  wake  up  and  comprehend  that  every- 
thing else  is  offensive,  and  this  alone  is  the  business  of 
life  ?  And  why  can  this  "  some  day "  not  be  now,  in 
Moscow  ?     AVliy  can  we   not  hope  that  the    same  will 


354         ON  THE  MOSCOW  CENSUS 

happen  with  society,  with  humanity,  that  happens  with 
the  aihng  organism,  when  suddenly  there  arrives  a  mo- 
ment of  convalescence  ?  The  organism  is  diseased ;  this 
means  that  the  cells  stop  doing  their  mysterious  work  : 
some  die,  others  are  born,  others  again  remain  indifferent, 
working  for  themselves.  Suddenly  there  arrives  a  mo- 
ment when  every  living  cell  begins  its  independent  vital 
work :  it  pushes  out  the  dead  cells,  with  a  living  barrier 
excludes  those  that  are  infected,  communicates  life  to 
those  that  live,  and  the  body  rises  from  the  dead  and 
lives  a  full  life. 

Why  can  we  not  think  and  hope  that  the  cells  of  our 
society  will  revive,  and  will  bring  the  organism  to  hfe  ? 
We  do  not  know  in  whose  power  the  cells  are,  but  we 
know  that  hfe  is  in  our  power.  We  can  manifest  the 
light  which  is  in  us,  or  we  may  put  it  out. 

Let  a  man  come  at  the  end  of  the  day  to  the  Lyapinski 
night  lodging-house,  when  one  thousand  insufficiently  clad 
and  hungry  people  are  waiting  in  the  cold  to  be  let  into 
the  house,  and  let  this  one  man  try  to  help  them,  —  his 
heart  will  bleed,  and  he  will  with  despair  and  resentment 
at  men  run  away  from  there ;  but  let  one  thousand  people 
come  to  those  one  thousand  people  with  the  desire  to  help 
them,  and  the  work  will  appear  easy  and  pleasant.  Let 
the  mechanics  invent  a  machine  with  which  to  lift  the 
burden  which  is  choking  us,  —  that  is  good  ;  but  while 
they  have  not  yet  invented  it,  let  us  in  foolish,  peasant, 
Christian  fashion  heave  in  a  mass,  —  maybe  we  can  hft  it. 
Heave,  friends,  all  together ! 


INTRODUCTION    TO    THE 
COLLECTED    ARTICLES 

"WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH  IN  ART? 

1887 


it 


INTRODUCTION    TO    THE 
COLLECTED    ARTICLES 

"WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH  IN   ART?" 


O  generation  of  vipers,  how  can  ye,  being  evil,  speak  good 
things  ?  for  out  of  the  abundance  of  the  heart  the  mouth 
speaketh.  A  good  man  out  of  the  good  treasure  of  the  heart 
bringeth  forth  good  things  :  and  an  evil  man  out  of  the  evil 
treasure  bringeth  forth  evil  things.  But  I  say  unto  you, 
That  every  idle  word  that  men  shall  speak,  they  shall  give 
account  thereof  in  the  day  of  judgment.  For  by  thy  words 
thou  shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy  words  thou  shalt  be 
condemned.     (Matt.  xii.  34-37.) 

In  this  volume  there  are  collected,  in  addition  to  stories 
which  describe  real  occurrences,  stories,  traditions,  saws, 
legends,  fables,  fairy-tales,  such  as  have  been  composed 
and  written  for  the  good  of  children. 

We  have  chosen  such  as  we  regard  as  conforming  with 
Christ's  teaching,  and  so  regard  as  good  and  true. 

Many  people,  and  especially  children,  reading  a  history, 
fairy-tale,  legend,  fable,  ask  first  of  all :  "  Is  what  they 
say  true  ? "  And  frequently,  when  they  see  that  what  is 
described  could  not  have  happened,  they  say,  "  This  is  an 
idle  invention  and  untrue." 

People  who  judge  thus  judge  incorrectly. 

The  truth  is  learned  not  by  him  who  learns  only  what 

has  been  and  what  happens,  but  by  him  who  learns  what 

ought  to  be  by  God's  will. 

357 


358  WHAT   IS   THE   TRUTH   IN   ART? 

The  truth  will  be  written  not  by  him  who  describes 
only  what  has  happened  and  what  this  man  and  that  man 
did,  but  by  him  who  will  show  what  people  do  well,  that 
is,  in  accordance  with  God's  will,  and  what  badly,  that  is, 
contrary  to  God's  will. 

The  truth  is  a  path.  Christ  has  said,  I  am  the  way  and 
the  truth  and  the  Hfe. 

And  so  the  truth  is  not  known  by  him  who  looks  at 
his  feet,  but  by  him  who  knows  by  the  sun  whither  to  go. 

All  Hterary  productions  are  good  and  necessary,  not 
when  they  describe  what  has  been,  but  when  they  show 
what  ought  to  be  ;  not  when  they  tell  what  men  did, 
but  when  they  estimate  what  is  good  and  what  bad, — 
when  they  show  to  men  the  narrow  path  of  God's  will, 
which  leads  to  life. 

In  order  to  show  this  path,  it  is  impossible  to  describe 
only  what  happens  in  the  world.  The  world  abides  in 
evil  and  in  offences.  If  you  are  going  to  describe  the 
world  as  it  is,  you  will  describe  many  lies,  and  in  your 
words  there  will  be  no  truth.  In  order  that  there  may  be 
any  truth  in  what  you  describe,  you  must  not  write  what 
is,  but  what  ought  to  be,  —  to  describe  the  truth,  not  of 
what  exists,  but  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  which  is  coming 
nearer  to  us,  but  is  not  yet.  For  this  reason  there  are 
mountains  of  books,  in  which  we  are  told  of  just  what 
has  happened,  or  what  might  have  happened,  but  these 
books  are  all  lies,  if  those  who  write  them  do  not  them- 
selves know  what  is  good  and  what  bad,  and  do  not  know 
and  do  not  point  out  the  one  path  which  leads  men  to  the 
kingdom  of  God.  And  there  are  fairy-tales,  parables, 
fables,  legends,  in  which  something  miraculous  is  de- 
scribed, something  which  has  never  happened  and  never 
could  have  happened,  and  these  legends,  fairy-tales,  fables, 
are  true,  because  tbey  show  wherein  the  will  of  God  has 
alwavs  been,  wherein  is  the  righteousness  of  the  kingdom 
of  God. 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH  IN  ART?      359 

There  may  be  a  book,  —  and  there  are  many,  many 
such  novels  and  stories  in  which  is  described  how  a  man 
lives  for  his  passions,  suffers,  torments  others,  undergoes 
dangers  and  want,  and  shows  cunning  ;  struggles  with 
others,  escapes  poverty,  and  finally  unites  with  the  object 
of  his  love,  and  becomes  famous,  rich,  and  happy.  Such 
a  book,  even  though  everything  described  in  it  is  as  it  has 
happened,  and  though  there  may  be  nothing  improbable  in 
it,  will  none  the  less  be  a  lie  and  untruth,  because  a  man 
who  lives  for  himself  and  his  passions,  no  matter  what 
beautiful  wife  he  may  have,  and  how  famous  and  rich  he 
may  be,  cannot  be  happy. 

And  there  may  be  a  legend  about  how  Christ  and  His 
apostles  walked  over  the  earth  and  went  to  see  a  rich  man, 
and  the  rich  man  did  not  let  Him  in,  and  how  He  went  to 
a  poor  widow,  and  she  let  Him  in.  And  then  He  ordered 
a  barrel  full  of  gold  to  be  rolled  up  to  the  rich  man,  and 
sent  a  wolf  to  the  poor  widow  to  eat  up  her  last  calf, 
and  the  widow  was  well  off,  and  the  rich  man  fared 
badly. 

Such  a  story  is  all  improbable,  because  nothing  of  what 
is  described  has  happened,  or  could  have  happened  ;  but 
it  is  all  true,  because  it  shows  what  always  must  be,  in 
what  the  good  is,  and  in  what  the  bad,  and  what  a  man 
must  strive  after  in  order  to  do  the  will  of  God. 

Xo  matter  what  miracles  may  be  described,  or  what 
animals  may  speak  in  human  fashion,  or  how  self-flying 
carpets  may  carry  people  from  place  to  place,  —  the  leg- 
ends, and  parables,  and  fables  will  be  true,  if  in  them 
there  be  the  righteousness  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  And 
if  there  be  not  that  truth,  let  everything  described  be 
attested  by  whomsoever  you  please,  —  it  will  all  be  a  lie, 
because  it  has  not  the  righteousness  of  the  kingdom  of 
God.  Christ  Himself  spoke  in  parables,  :^nd  His  parables 
have  remained  eternal  truths.  He  only  added.  Observe 
as  you  hear. 


TO    THE    DEAR    YOUTH 

1887 


TO    THE    DEAR  YOUTH 


Your  letter  is,  not  in  spite,  but  in  consequence,  of 
your  youth  so  heartfelt  and  so  serious  that,  no  matter 
how  difficult  and  how  inconvenient  it  is  for  me  to  answer 
it  in  a  short  letter,  I  shall  none  the  less  try  to  do  so. 

Y^ou  write  that  you  do  not  need  any  defence  of  the 
necessity  of  faith,  that  you  recoguize  this  necessity.  That 
is  nice !  Thank  God  for  this.  You  have  that  which  no 
one  can  give.  As  Christ  has  said :  "  No  man  can  come 
to  me  except  the  Father  draws  him." 

But  you  say :  "  What  shall  I  believe  in  ? "  You  say  : 
"  Christianity,  but  which  ? " 

There  may  be  two  conceptions :  Christ  God,  the  son  of 
God,  who  came  down  from  heaven,  in  order  to  save  and 
enlighten  men,  and  Christ  the  man,  one  of  those  in  whom 
there  is  the  highest  divine  wisdom,  who  lived  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago,  and  who  founded  a  teaching  which 
has  taken  possession  of  humanity,  and  has  transformed  it. 

Let  us  at  first  admit  the  second  supposition,  which  I 
have  never  fully  admitted,  and  which,  I  assume,  is  also 
unpleasant  for  you  to  admit.  Let  us  admit  it.  Christ 
is  a  great  sage  and  teacher,  not  only  in  words,  but  also  in 
his  life  and  death.  Is  there  any  possibihty  of  perverting 
the  teaching  of  such  a  man  ?  How,  for  example,  can  we 
pervert  Socrates'  teaching  ?     Let  them  pervert  and  distort 

363 


oc 


64  TO    THE    DEAR   YOUTH 

him  as  much  as  they  please.  He  who  understands  the 
spirit  of  Socrates'  teaching  will  without  any  effort  and 
without  any  labour  reject  the  perversions,  and  leave 
what  forms  the  essence  of  the  teaching. 

A  great  teacher  is  great  for  this  very  reason,  that  he  is 
clear,  unambiguous,  and  unsubjected  to  perversions,  just 
as  a  diamond  cannot  be  ground  by  anything  weaker  than 
it  itself  is. 

For  the  same  reason  there  can  be  no  different  interpre- 
tations of  the  great  teacher.  He  is  great  for  the  very 
reason  that  he  has  unified  everything  which  was  scattered 
and  dispersed.  How  can  his  teaching  break  up  into  dif- 
ferent sects  ?  If  the  great  teaching  breaks  up  into  differ- 
ent sects,  this  means  that  something  false  is  falling  to 
pieces,  something  which  is  called  by  the  name  of  a  great 
teaching,  but  not  the  teaching  itself. 

If  the  great  teaching  (the  one  which  I  recognize  as 
great)  should  present  itself  to  me  as  corrupted  or  break- 
ing up  into  a  multitude  of  sects,  what  else  could  I  do  but 
take  the  teaching  itself,  the  one  which  is  nearest  to  the 
teacher,  in  which  there  are  most  of  his  utterances, 
and  begin  to  read  it,  trying  to  penetrate  its  meaning.  If 
the  teaching  is  distorted  and  has  broken  up  into  a  multi- 
tude of  sects,  one  of  two  things  is  true :  either  the  teach- 
ing itself  is  insignificant,  or  I  do  not  know  the  great 
teaching. 

And  so,  in  the  case  of  the  second  assumption,  that 
Christ  is  a  wise  man,  it  is  necessary  quite  freely  to  read 
the  gospels  of  the  four  evangelists,  and  without  self-satis- 
faction and  without  false  joy  to  read  this  book,  as  we  read 
the  books  of  the  sages.  Then  there  will  at  once  appear 
the  greatness  of  the  teaching,  the  distortions  will  fall  off 
at  once,  and  it  will  become  clear  that  the  breaking  up 
into  sects  does  not  take  place  in  the  teaching  itself,  but 
in  the  artificial  sphere  which  is  outside  of  it. 

The  necessity  of  simply  and  naively  reading  the  four 


TO    THE    DEAR    YOUTH  365 

evangelists,  excerpting  from  them  the  utterances  of  Christ 
Himself,  becomes  even  more  obvious  in  the  case  of  the 
first  assumption.  Christ  God  once  during  the  whole  ex- 
istence of  the  world  descended  upon  earth  in  order  to 
reveal  to  men  their  salvation.  He  came  down  out  of  love 
for  men.  He  Hved,  and  taught,  and  died,  loving  men. 
You  and  I  are  men.  We  suffer  and  are  agonized  in  our 
search  for  salvation,  and  we  do  not  find  it.  Why,  then, 
did  Christ  come  down  into  the  world  ?  There  is  some- 
thing wrong  here. 

Could  God,  upon  coming  down  to  the  world,  have  for- 
gotten you  and  me  ?  Or  was  He  unable  to  speak  in  such 
a  way  that  we  might  understand  ?  But  He  did  speak, 
and  we  have  His  words  before  us.  They  are  before  us  in 
precisely  the  same  form  in  which  they  were  before  those 
who  heard  His  sermon  on  the  mount.  Why  did  all 
those  understand  ?  Why  did  they  not  say  that  it  was 
obscure,  and  why  did  they  not  ask  Him  for  explanations  ? 
No,  they  understood  Him,  and  said  that  they  had  never 
heard  anything  like  it,  that  He  was  teaching  them  as 
e^ovaCav  ex^^v,  as  one  having  power.  Why  is  it  incom- 
prehensible to  us,  and  why  are  we  afraid  that  we  shall 
break  up  into  sects  ?  Evidently  because  we  do  not  hear 
Him,  but  those  who  stood  in  His  place. 

Thus,  as  in  the  first  assumption,  there  is  one  thing  left 
to  do,  and  that  is,  to  listen  to  His  words  with  childish 
simplicity,  as  a  child  listens  to  his  mother,  with  the  full 
assurance  that  his  mother,  loving  him,  will  be  able  to 
tell  him  everything  clearly  and  simply,  and  that  only  his 
mother  will  tell  him  the  re ,4  truth  and  everything  neces- 
sary for  his  good.  We  need  only  read  in  this  manner,  re- 
jecting, at  least  for  a  time,  all  considerations  about  what 
by  others  is  considered  divine,  just,  lawful,  in  order  that  it 
may  become  absolutely  clear  that  God  has  not  deceived 
us,  that  He  has,  indeed,  given  us  salvation,  and  has 
revealed  to  us  the  truth,  as  indubitably  and  as  compre- 


366  TO    THE   DEAR   YOUTH 

liensibly  as  the  mathematical  truths  are  revealed  to  us, 
when  we  learn  them. 

With  such  a  reading  the  spirit  of  Christ's  teaching  is 
revealed  to  us,  that  is,  that  universal  principle  which 
permeates  everything,  and  which  will  guide  us  in  the 
comprehension  or  non-comprehension  of  obscure  passages. 
I  say  "  non-comprehension,"  because  the  non-comprehen- 
sion of  obscure  passages  for  a  man  who  is  permeated  with 
the  spirit  of  the  teaching  does  not  interfere  with  the 
clear,  full  comprehension  of  clear  passages.  To  a  man 
who  is  permeated  with  the  spirit  of  the  teaching  an 
obscure  passage  means  only  this,  that  the  writing  on  paper 
is  the  work  of  human  hands  and  is  subject  to  errors,  but 
in  no  way  can  lead  him  into  error  as  to  the  meaning  of 
the  clear  passages. 

Only  he  who  seeks  the  letter,  and  not  the  spirit,  can 
ascribe  an  arbitrary  meaning,  which  is  frequently  contrary 
to  the  spirit  of  the  teaching,  to  the  obscure  passages.  The 
obscure  passages  cannot  interfere  with  the  understanding 
of  the  teaching.  There  are  too  many  passages  which  are 
clear,  divine,  subject  to  no  varying  interpretations,  all 
of  them  united  among  themselves  by  one  principle  and  by 
the  immediate  and  ecstatic  consciousness  of  the  truth, 
passages  which  echo  in  the  hearts  of  all  men,  in  order 
that  the  obscure  passages  should  interfere  with  the  com- 
prehension. What  interferes  with  the  comprehension  is 
something  else,  that  of  which  the  gospel  says :  "  They 
did  not  walk  toward  the  light,  for  their  works  were  evil." 

What  interferes  with  the  comprehension  of  Christ's 
teaching  is  this,  that  the  w'  rks  of  the  world  amidst 
which  we  have  grown  up  and  live,  of  the  world  which 
has  the  impudence  to  call  itself  Christian,  are  evil,  and 
we  do  not  want  to  see  what  arraigns  us,  that  what  is  de- 
manded of  us  is  a  renunciation  of  what  we  have  become 
fond  of,  and  the  cross,  which  Christ  recognizes  as  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  the  life  of  His  disciple. 


TO    THE    DEAR    YOUTH  367 

Christ's  teaching  is  as  simple,  clear,  and  indubitable  as 
the  fact  that  all  right  angles  are  equAl,  but  I  have  seen  a 
man  build  a  crooked  house,  and  so  deny  this  truth.  In 
order  that  I  may  understand  Christ's  teaching,  I  must 
first  of  all  say  to  myself  that  what  I  am  studying  is  the 
highest  law,  the  law  of  God,  and  that,  therefore,  I  with 
this  law  measure  all  the  other  laws  which  I  know,  and 
not  vice  versa,  look  in  God's  law  for  what  confirms  the 
human  laws,  but  in  advance  recognize  it  as  holy.  Only 
he  will  understand  Christ's  teaching  who,  before  studying 
it,  will  clearly  establish  in  his  soul  the  meaning  of  what 
he  is  seeking,  —  he  who  recognizes  as  holy  nothing  but 
his  soul,  as  a  human  soul,  and  its  relation  to  God. 

We  have  been  taught  that  we  can  be  Christians,  without 
effort,  ever  since  our  baptism,  that  is,  almost  since  our 
birth,  without  any  labour,  without  any  self-renunciation. 

Christ  has  said  (Luke  xiv.  33):  "Who  forsaketh  not 
all  that  he  hath  cannot  be  my  disciple."  But  there  have 
been  no  such  Christians,  and  there  can  be  none.  The 
kingdom  of  God  is  always  taken  by  force,  and  it  cannot 
be  otherwise.  It  is  impossible  to  serve  God  and  mam- 
mon, —  it  is  impossible  to  be  a  little  bit  a  Christian, 
to  hold  on  to  Christianity  for  the  sake  of  pleasure,  of 
decency,  of  consolation  in  the  heavy  moments  of  life. 
Christianity  is  the  teaching  of  the  true  life. 

Christ  says :  "  He  that  believeth  on  me  hath  life,  and 
he  that  believeth  not  hath  not  life."  And  so  the  faith 
in  Christ  changes  a  man's  whole  life  and  imposes  on  him 
what  he  calls  the  cross. 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  have  said  anything  of  im- 
portance to  you.  L  am  afraid  not,  though  I  should  like 
to  very  much,  for  I  have  come  to  love  you  from  your 
letter.  I  think  that  you  will  get  some  of  my  writings  on 
religious  questions,  and  then  you  will  probably  see  clearly 
what  now  is  not  comprehensible  to  you.  Seek  and  you 
will  find.     That  is  so  simple.     All  the  needs  which  are 


368  TO   THE    DEAR   YOUTH 

stored  in  man  receive  their  satisfaction ;  how,  then,  is  it 
possible  that  the  highest  need  of  faith  should  not  have 
it  ?     All  that  is  necessary  is  to  reject  the  false  concep- 
tions. 
1886. 


WHAT     A      CHRISTIAN      MAY 
DO,  AND  WHAT   NOT 

1887 


WHAT      A     CHRISTIAN      MAY 
DO,    AND    WHAT    NOT 


One  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eighty  years  ago  a 
new  law  was  revealed  to  men  by  Jesus  Christ.  By  His 
life  and  His  death  Christ  showed  to  men  what  he  who 
wants  to  be  His  disciple,  a  Christian,  may  do,  and  what 
not. 

According  to  Christ's  teaching,  the  sons  of  the  Father 
are  free  (Matt.  xvii.  26),  for  they  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  shall  make  them  free  (John  viii.  32).  Christ's  teach- 
ing was  then,  even  as  it  is  now,  contrary  to  the  teaching 
of  the  world.  According  to  the  teaching  of  the  world, 
the  powers  govern  the  nations,  and,  to  govern  them,  com- 
pel some  people  to  kill,  execute,  punish  others,  and  to 
swear  that  they  will  in  everything  do  the  will  of  the 
rulers.  According  to  Christ's  teaching,  a  man  not  only 
cannot  kill  another,  but  even  cannot  do  violence  to  him, 
or  resist  him  with  force :  he  can  not  do  evil  to  his  neigh- 
bour, nor  even  to  his  enemy. 

The  teaching  of  the  world  and  of  Christ  have  always 
been  and  always  will  be  opposed  to  each  other.  Christ 
knew  this,  and  said  this  to  His  disciples,  and  predicted  to 
them  that  He  Himself  would  suffer  and  that  they,  too, 
would  be  delivered  to  be  afflicted  and  killed  (Matt  xxiv. 
9),  and  that  the  world  would  hate  them,  because  they 

371 


372  WHAT    A    CHKISTIAN    MAY    DO 

would  not  be  the  servants  of  the  world,  but  of  the  Father 
(John  XV.  19,  20). 

And  every  thiug  came  to  pass  as  Jesus  had  predicted. 
The  world  hated  Him  and  tried  to  ruin  Him.  All,  the 
Pharisees,  and  the  Sadducees,  and  the  scribes,  and  the 
Herodians,  rebuked  Him  for  being  an  enemy  to  Caesar,  for 
prohibiting  men  from  paying  tribute  to  him,  for  disturb- 
ing and  corrupting  the  world.  They  said  that  He  was 
an  evildoer,  that  He  made  Himself  a  king,  and  so  was  an 
enemy  of  Ctesar  (John  xix.  12). 

Even  before  He  was  delivered  up  to  be  put  to  death, 
they,  watching  Him,  sent  cunning  men  up  to  Him,  to 
catch  Him  in  some  utterance,  so  as  to  deliver  Him  up 
to  the  authorities  and  the  power  of  the  ruler.  And  they 
asked  Him: 

Master,  we  know  that  Thou  art  true,  and  teachest  the 
way  of  God  in  truth,  neither  carest  Thou  for  any  man  : 
for  Thou  regardest  not  the  person  of  men.  Tell  us  there- 
fore, What  thiukest  Thou  ?  Is  it  lawful  to  give  tribute 
unto  Cassar,  or  not  ?  But  Jesus  perceived  their  wicked- 
ness, and  said,  Why  tempt  ye  me,  ye  hypocrites  ?  Shew 
me  the  tribute  money.  And  they  brought  unto  Him  a 
penny.  And  He  saith  unto  them.  Whose  is  this  image 
and  superscription  ?  They  say  unto  Him,  Caesar's.  Then 
saith  He  unto  them.  Render  therefore  unto  Caesar  the 
things  which  are  Caesar's  ;  and  unto  God  the  things  that 
are  God's.  When  they  had  heard  these  words,  they  mar- 
velled at  His  answer,  and  grew  silent. 

They  had  expected  Him  to  say,  either  that  it  is  lawful 
and  necessary  to  pay  tribute  to  Caesar,  and  that  thus  He 
would  destroy  His  whole  teaching  about  the  sons  being 
free,  about  a  man  being  obliged  to  hve  like  the  birds  of 
the  air,  not  caring  for  the  morrow,  and  many  similar 
things ;  or  that  He  would  say  that  it  is  not  lawful  to  pay 
tribute  to  Caesar,  and  that  thus  He  would  show  Himself  to 
be  an  enemy  to  Caesar.     But  Christ  said,  Unto  Caesar  the 


WHAT    A    CHRISTIAN   MAT   DO  373 

things  which  are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  which 
are  God's.  He  said  more  than  they  had  expected  of  Him. 
He  defined  everything,  dividing  everything  a  man  has 
into  two  parts,  —  into  the  human  and  the  divine,  and 
said  that  what  is  man's  may  be  given  to  man,  and  what 
is  God's  cannot  be  given  to  man,  but  only  to  God ;  and 
what  both  God  and  Caesar  claim  ought  to  be  given  to 
God. 

With  these  words  He  told  them  that  if  a  man  believes 
in  the  law  of  God,  he  can  fulfil  Caesar's  law  only  when 
it  is  not  contrary  to  God's.  For  the  Pharisees,  who  did 
not  know  the  truth,  there  still  existed  a  law  of  God 
which  they  would  not  have  transgressed,  even  if  Caesar's 
law  demanded  it  of  them.  They  would  not  have  de- 
parted from  circumcision,  from  the  observance  of  the 
Sabbath,  from  fasting  and  from  many  other  things.  If 
Caesar  had  demanded  of  them  work  on  a  Sabbath,  they 
would  have  said :  "  To  Caesar  belong  all  days,  but  not  the 
Sabbath."  The  same  is  true  of  circumcision  and  of  other 
things. 

Christ  showed  them  with  His  answer  that  God's  law 
stood  higher  than  Caesar's,  and  that  a  man  can  give  to 
Caesar  only  what  is  not  contrary  to  God's  law. 

Now,  what  is  for  Christ  and  for  His  disciples  Caesar's, 
and  what  God's  ? 

One  is  horrified  to  think  of  the  answer  to  this  question, 
which  one  may  hear  from  Christians  of  our  time !  God's, 
in  the  opinion  of  our  Christians,  never  interferes  with 
Caesar's,  and  Caesar's  is  always  in  agreement  with  God's. 
The  whole  life  is  given  up  to  the  service  of  Caesar,  and 
only  what  does  not  interfere  with  Caesar  is  turned  over  to 
God.     Not  so  did  Christ  understand  it. 

For  Christ  the  whole  life  is  God's  business,  and  what 
is  not  God's  may  be  given  to  Caesar. 

"  Unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's,  and  unto 
God  the  things  which  are  God's." 


374  WHAT   A   CHRISTIAN   MAT   DO 

What  is  Csesar's?  The  coin,  —  what  is  carnal,  —  not 
yours. 

Give,  then,  everything  carnal  to  him  who  will  take  it ; 
but  your  life,  which  you  have  received  from  God,  is  all 
God's.  This  cannot  be  given  to  any  one  but  God,  because 
man's  life,  according  to  Christ's  teaching,  is  the  service  of 
God  (Matt.  iv.  10),  and  one  cannot  serve  two  masters 
(Matt.  vi.  24). 

Everything  carnal  a  man  must  give  to  somebody,  and 
so  may  give  also  to  Ciaesar ;  but  he  cannot  serve  anybody 
but  God. 

If  men  believed  in  Christ's  teaching,  in  the  teaching  of 
love,  they  could  not  lose  all  the  divine  laws  revealed  by 
Christ,  in  order  to  fuliil  the  laws  of  Ceesar. 

1887. 


LETTER   TO   N.   N, 

(To  Engelhard) 
1887 


LETTER  TO  N.  N. 

(To  Engelhard) 


My  dear  N.  N.  :  —  I  write  to  you  "  dear,"  not  because 
people  usually  write  this  way,  but  because  since  the 
receipt  of  your  first,  but  especially  of  your  second,  letter, 
I  feel  that  you  are  very  near  to  me,  and  I  love  you  very 
much. 

In  the  sentiment  which  I  experience  there  is  much 
which  is  egoistical.  You  probably  do  not  think  so,  but 
you  cannot  imagine  to  what  extent  I  am  lonely,  to  what 
extent  that  which  is  my  real  ego  is  despised  by  all  who 
surround  me. 

I  know  that  he  who  suffers  until  the  end  shall  be 
saved ;  I  know  that  it  is  only  in  trifles  that  a  man  is 
given  the  right  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his  labour,  or  at 
least  to  see  this  fruit,  but  that  in  matters  of  divine  truth, 
which  is  eternal,  it  caonot  be  given  to  man  to  see  the  fruit 
of  his  work,  especially  in  the  short  period  of  his  brief  life ; 
I  know  all  that,  and  yet  frequently  lose  courage,  and  so 
the  meeting  with  you  and  the  hope,  almost  the  assurance, 
of  finding  in  you  a  man  who  is  sincerely  walking  with 
me  on  the  road  and  tending  toward  the  same  goal  is  a 
great  joy  to  me. 

Well,  now  I  will  answer  everything  in  order. 

Your  letters  to  Aksakov  have  pleased  me,  especially 
the  last.     Your  proofs  are  incontestable,  but  they  do  not 

377 


378  '  LETTER   TO   N.   N. 

exist  for  him.  Everything  he  says  has  long  been  known 
to  me.  It  is  all  repeated  in  life,  in  literature,  in  conver- 
sations :  it  is  all  one  and  the  same.  It  is  this :  "  I  see 
that  this  is  true,  and  this  false,  for  such  and  such  reasons ; 
that  this  is  good,  and  this  bad,  because  it  is  so  and  so." 

Aksakov  and  his  like  see  that  it  is  true ;  even  before 
you  have  told  it  to  them,  they  know  that  it  is  true.  But 
they  abide  in  the  lie,  and  in  order  that  a  man,  like  any 
other  with  a  heart  which  loves  the  good  and  despises  the 
evil,  and  with  a  reason  which  has  this  one  purpose  of  dis- 
tinguishing the  lie  from  the  truth,  may  be  able  to  live 
in  the  lie  and  the  evil,  and  serve  them,  he  had  to  close 
his  eyes  against  the  truth  even  before  this,  and  to  continue 
to  do  the  favourite  evil. 

They  have  all  the  same  shield :  the  historical  concep- 
tion, the  objective  view,  the  care  for  others,  and  the  re- 
moval of  the  question  as  to  their  relation  to  the  good  and 
to  truth. 

Aksakov  does  this,  and  so  does  Solov^v,  and  so  have 
done  all  the  theologians,  and  all  the  statesmen,  the  politi- 
cal economists,  and  all  who  live  contrary  to  the  truth  and 
to  goodness,  and  who  have  to  justify  themselves  before 
themselves. 

This  cannot  be  said  any  more  clearly  than  it  has  been 
said  in  John  iii.  19-21. 

From  this  I  draw  the  conclusion  that  in  relation  to 
these  people  one  must  not  cast  the  pearls,  but  must  work 
out  a  certain  relation  to  them,  so  as  not  to  waste  strength. 
Disputing  with  them  is  not  only  an  idle  matter,  but  even 
harmful  for  our  purpose.  They  irritate  us  with  provoca- 
tions to  something  superfluous  and  inexact,  and,  forgetting 
all  the  chief  things  which  you  have  said,  will  harass  you 
only  about  that  one  thing. 

The  relation  which  I  am  trying  to  work  out  in  myself 
toward  them,  and  which  I  advise  others,  too,  to  work  out, 
is  like  my  relation  to  a  debauched,  drunken  bully  who  is 


LETTER   TO    N.   N.  379 

trying  to  draw  my  sixteen-year-old  son  into  debauch.  I 
am  sorry  for  this  debauchee,  but  I  will  not  try  to  mend 
him,  for  I  know  that  it  is  impossible  :  he  is  beyond  any 
hope,  and  will  only  ridicule  me  in  the  eyes  of  my  son. 
Nor  will  I  by  force  remove  my  son  from  him,  for  my 
son  will  inevitably  meet  him  or  his  like,  to-morrow,  if  not 
to-day ;  I  will  even  not  try  to  disclose  his  baseness  to  my 
son.  My  son  has  to  find  it  out  for  himself.  I  will  try  to 
fill  my  son's  soul  with  such  contents  that  the  temptations 
of  the  bully  will  not  corrupt  him,  or  else  I  shall  lose  all 
my  strength,  of  which  there  is  none  too  much,  in  casting 
the  pearls,  and  they  will,  if  not  trample  upon  you  and  me, 
and  crash  us,  put  out  the  little  flickering  light  amidst  the 
darkness. 

And  with  this  excursus  I  have  accidentally  approached 
directly  the  second  point  in  your  letter. 

"  How  are  men's  eyes  to  be  opened  ?  How  are  they  to 
be  saved  from  the  temptations  of  the  debauchees,  when 
violence  is  in  the  way  ? " 

"  How  is  the  evangehcal  teaching  to  be  reahzed  ? " 

"  Must  I  not  take  the  part  of  men  if  they  ask  my  aid 
even  though  I  should  have  to  free  them  by  force,  when 
before  my  eyes  others  kill  and  torture  them  ? " 

It  is  not  right  to  free  and  defend  men  by  force,  and  it 
is  not  right,  because  it  is  impossible  and  also  because  it  is 
foolish,  to  attempt  doing  good  by  means  of  violence. 

My  dearest,  please,  for  the  sake  of  the  God  of  truth, 
which  you  serve,  be  in  no  hurry,  do  not  get  excited,  do 
not  invent  proofs  of  the  justice  of  your  opinion  before  you 
have  thought  deeply,  not  of  what  I  am  writing  you,  but 
of  the  Gospel,  and  not  of  the  Gospel  as  the  word  of  Christ, 
or  God,  and  so  forth,  but  of  the  Gospel  as  the  clearest, 
simplest,  most  comprehensible,  and  practical  teaching  of 
how  each  of  us  and  all  men  are  to  live. 

If  a  mother  in  my  presence  thrashes  her  child,  what 
shall  I  do  ? 


380  LETTER    TO    N.    N. 

Consider  that  the  question  is  what  I  must  do,  that  is, 
what  is  good  and  rational,  and  not  what  my  first  impulse 
will  be.  The  first  impulse  in  the  case  of  a  personal  insult 
is  revenge ;  but  the  question  is  whether  this  is  rational. 

Precisely  such  is  the  question  as  to  whether  it  is 
rational  to  use  violence  against  the  mother  who  is  whip- 
ping her  child.  If  a  mother  is  whipping  her  child,  what 
is  it  that  pains  me,  and  that  I  consider  evil  ?  Is  it  that 
the  child  is  suffering  pain,  or  that  the  mother,  instead 
of  the  joy  of  love,  is  experiencing  the  agony  of  malice  ? 
I  think  that  in  either  there  is  evil. 

One  man  can  do  no  evil.  Evil  is  the  disunion  between 
men.  And  so,  if  I  want  to  act,  I  can  do  so  only  for 
the  purpose  of  destroying  the  disunion  and  establishing  the 
union  between  the  mother  and  the  child.  What,  then, 
shall  I  do  ?  Shall  I  use  violence  on  the  mother  ?  I  shall 
not  destroy  her  disunion  (sin)  with  the  child,  but  shall  only 
introduce  a  new  sin,  —  the  disunion  between  her  and  me. 
What,  then,  shall  I  do  ?  It  is  this :  take  the  child's 
place,  and  this  will  not  be  irrational. 

To  what  Dostoevski  writes, — which  has  always  dis- 
gusted me,  —  and  what  the  monks  and  the  metropolitans 
have  told  me,  —  that  it  is  lawful  to  wage  war,  for  it  is  a 
defence  ("  to  lay  down  one's  life  for  one's  brothers "),  I 
have  always  replied :  "  To  defend  with  one's  breast,  to 
substitute  oneself,  yes,  —  but  to  shoot  people  with  guns, 
—  that  is  not  defending,  but  killing." 

Ponder  on  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel,  and  you  will  see 
that  the  very  short  fourth  commandment.  Resist  not  evil 
with  evil,  reply  not  to  evil,  is,  I  shall  not  say,  the  main, 
but  the  binding  link  of  the  whole  teaching,  the  one  which 
all  the  pseudo-Christian  teachings  have  most  carefully 
circumvented,  and  that  proposition  the  non-recognition  of 
which  has  served  as  the  foundation  of  everything  which 
you  so  justly  hate. 

To  say   nothing    of    the    Niceue    Council,  which   has 


LETTER    TO    X.    N.  381 

created  so  much  evil,  and  which  is  based  on  this  same 
lack  of  comprehension  of  Christ's  teaching,  that  is,  ou 
violence  in  the  name  of  the  good  and  of  Christ,  this  vio- 
lence in  the  name  of  the  good  is  to  be  found  in  its  germ 
in  apostolic  times,  even  in  the  Acts  of  Paul,  and  vitiates 
the  meaning  of  the  teaching. 

Kow  often  I  have  felt  sad  in  my  conversations  v^ith 
priests  and  revolutionists,  who  look  upon  the  evangelical 
teaching  as  upon  a  weapon  for  obtaining  external  aims. 
The  men  of  either  extreme  poles  have  with  equal  virulence 
denied  this  fundamental  proposition  of  Christ's  teaching. 
The  first  must  not  persecute  and  crush  the  heterodox,  and 
bless  battles  and  executions ;  the  second  must  not  by 
force  destroy  the  existing  monstrous  disorder,  which  is 
called  order. 

Apparently  the  priests  and  the  authorities  cannot  even 
imagine  human  life  without  violence.  The  same  is  true 
of  the  revolutionists.  By  their  fruits  do  you  tell  the 
tree :  a  good  tree  cannot  bring  forth  fruits  of  violence. 
Christ's  teaching  can  neither  serve  for  killing,  nor  for 
temporizing ;  and  so  the  men  of  either  class,  by  pervert- 
ing the  teaching,  deprive  themselves  of  the  one  force 
which  is  given  by  the  faith  in  the  truth,  in  the  whole 
truth,  and  not  in  a  particle  of  it. 

"  They  that  take  up  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the 
sword,"  is  not  a  prediction,  but  a  confirmation  of  a  fact 
well  known  to  all. 

"  If  thy  light  is  darkness,"  if  that  which  thou  regard- 
est  as  good  is  not  good,  but  evil,  what  will  the  evil  of  thy 
life  and  of  thy  works  be  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  serve  God  a  little  and  the  devil  a 
little,  and  the  gospel  is  not  such  a  stupid  book  as  the 
priests  have  made  it  out  for  us.  Every  proposition  is  not 
given  there  to  the  winds,  but  is  organically  connected  with 
the  whole  teaching.  Even  so  the  commandment  about  the 
non-resistance  to  evil  by  means  of  violence  goes  through 


382  LETTER   TO    N.    N. 

the  whole  Gospel,  and  without  it  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel 
falls  to  pieces,  at  least  it  does  so  to  me.  Not  only  is  it 
many  times  expressed  clearly  and  directly,  so  that  it  can- 
not be  concealed;  not  only  is  all  the  description  of  life 
and  of  Christ's  works  an  application  of  this  command- 
ment ;  but  Evangelist  John  presents  Caiaphas  as  not 
understanding  this  truth,  and,  in  consequence  of  the  lack 
of  comprehension,  as  ruining  Christ's  hfe  in  the  name  of 
the  people's  good ;  the  Gospel  shows  directly  that  resist- 
ance to  evil  by  means  of  violence  is  the  most  terrible  and 
dangerous  offence  into  which  Christ's  disciples  fall,  and  He 
Himself  comes  very  near  falling  into  it. 

More  than  this :  it  now  seems  to  me  that  if  Christ  and 
His  teaching  did  not  exist,  I  should  myself  have  discovered 
this  truth,  —  so  simple  and  clear  does  it  appear  to  me 
now,  and  I  am  convinced  it  will  appear  such  to  you  also. 

It  is  now  so  clear  to  me  that  if  I  were  to  admit  the 
slightest  violence  in  the  name  of  correcting  a  most  terrible 
evil,  another,  on  the  basis  of  this,  would  permit  himself 
a  small  act  of  violence,  and  a  third,  a  fourth,  and  milhons 
of  small  acts  of  violence  will  combine  into  one  terrible 
evil,  which  exists  even  now  and  crushes  us. 

If  you  have  fulfilled  my  request  and  have  calmly  read 
to  the  end,  refraining  from  arguments  in  confirmation  of 
your  opinion,  and  have  followed  my  exposition,  then  I 
hope  that  you  will  agree  with  me  that  there  are  also 
strong  arguments  for  the  contrary  opinion,  and  I  hope 
that  you  will  still  more  agree  with  me  when  you  have 
read  the  exposition  which  I  am  sending  you. 

So  far  as  I  can  guess,  you  are  now  in  this  position : 
your  reason  tells  you  that  I  am  right,  but  your  heart 
revolts  against  such  a  proposition  concerning  the  non- 
resistance  to  evil. 

You  say  to  yourself :  "  Something  is  wrong  here ; 
there  is  here  some  error  of  judgment,  and  I  will  find  it 
and  wiU  prove  that  it  is  impossible  that  Christ's  teaching. 


LETTER   TO   N.    N  383 

the  teaching  of  love  for  my  brother,  should  lead  me  to  sit 
with  folded  arms  looking  at  the  evil  which  is  being  com- 
mitted in  the  world.  It  is  all  very  well,"  you  say,  "  for 
an  old  man  who  has  lived  his  day  to  talk  idly  and  assure 
all  men  that  we  must  not  resist  evil.  He  does  not  sufi'er : 
he  has  enough  to  eat,  is  satisfied,  has  everything  he  wants, 
and  has  but  a  short  time  left  to  live.  The  whole  fire  of 
life  has  been  used  up  by  him,  but  I  feel  without  reflection 
that  in  me  is  stored  love  for  what  is  good  and  true,  and 
hatred  for  what  is  evil  and  untrue,  and  not  vainly  so. 
I  cannot  help  but  express  it  and  live  in  its  name,  and 
every  step  of  my  life  is  a  struggle  with  evil.  I  am  obliged 
to  struggle,  and  I  will  struggle  with  them,  using  all  the 
means  which  have  already  become  clear  to  me  and  which 
will  become  clear  to  me  in  the  future.  What  is  needed 
is  a  propaganda  among  the  people,  a  closer  union  with 
the  sectarians,  the  exertion  of  an  influence  on  the  govern- 
ment, and  so  forth." 

The  feehng  which  prompts  this  is  good,  and  I  love  you 
for  this,  but  it  is  the  feeling  which  prompted  Peter  to 
provide  himself  with  a  knife  and  cut  off  the  slave's  ear. 

Imagine  what  would  have  happened  if  Jesus  had  not 
repressed  those  feelings :  there  would  have  been  a  fight ; 
let  us  suppose  that  Jesus'  men  would  have  been  victo- 
rious and  would  have  conquered  the  whole  of  Jerusalem. 
They  would  have  struck  down  men,  and  others  would 
have  struck  down  them.  What  would  have  become  of 
the  Christian  teaching? 

It  would  not  exist  now,  and  we  should  have  nothing 
to  lean  on.  We  should  be  worse  than  an  Aksakov  or 
Solov^v. 

In  order  completely  to  express  to  you  my  idea,  I  will 
tell  you  what  I  take  to  be  the  meaning  of  Christ,  a  mean- 
ing which  is  not  hazy  and  mystical,  but  clear  and  vital. 

All  say  that  the  meaning  of  Christianity  lies  in  loving 
God  and  our  neighbour  as  ourselves.     But  what  is  God  ? 


384  LETTEK    TO    N.    N. 

What  is  meant  by  loving  something  incomprehensible,  — 
God  ?     What  is  a  neighbour  ?     What  am  I  ? 

These  words  have  for  me  this  meaning  :  To  love  God 
means  to  love  truth. 

To  love  my  neighbour  as  myself  means  to  recognize 
the  unity  of  my  essence,  soul,  and  life  with  every  other 
human  life,  with  eternal  truth,  —  God.  So  it  is  for  me. 
But  it  is  clear  to  me  that  these  words,  which  defiue  noth- 
ing, may  be  understood  differently,  and  that  the  majority 
of  men  are  even  unable  to  understand  it  as  I  do.  The 
main  thing  is  that  these  words  put  no  obligations  on  me, 
or  on  auy  one  else,  and  define  nothing. 

How  is  this  ?  I  am  to  love  God,  whom  each  under- 
derstands  in  his  own  way,  and  others  do  not  recognize  at 
all ;  and  I  am  to  love  my  neighbour  as  myself,  whereas 
there  is  implanted  in  me  the  love  of  self,  which  does  not 
leave  me  for  a  moment,  and  very  frequently  just  as  con- 
stant a  hatred  of  others. 

This  is  so  obscure  and  impracticable  that  it  remains  an 
empty  phrase.  It  is  my  opinion  that  it  is  a  metaphysical 
proposition,  which  is  important  in  itself,  but  when  it  is 
understood  as  a  rule  of  life,  as  a  law,  it  is  simply  stupid. 
Unfortunately  it  is  frequently  understood  as  such. 

All  this  I  say  in  order  to  make  clear  that  the  meaning 
of  Christianity,  as  of  any  other  faith,  does  not  lie  in  meta- 
physical principles,  —  these  will  always  be  the  same  with 
all  humanity  (Buddha,  Confucius,  Socrates),  —  but  in  their 
application  to  life,  in  the  living  representation  of  that  good 
of  every  man  and  of  all  humanity  which  is  obtained  in 
their  application,  and  in  the  determination  of  the  rules 
by  means  of  which  they  are  olitained. 

Even  in  Deuteronomy  it  says,  "  Love  God  and  thy 
neighbour  as  thyself ; "  but  the  application  of  this  rule 
according  to  Deuteronomy  consisted  in  circumcision,  in  the 
Sabbath,  and  in  the  criminal  law. 

The  significance  of  Christianity  consists  in  the  indica- 


LETTER   TO    N.    N.  385 

tion  of  the  possibility  and  the  happiness  of  the  execution 
of  the  law  of  love.  Christ  very  clearly  defined  in  the 
sermon  on  the  mount  how  this  law  must  and  can  be  car- 
ried out  for  His  own  happiness  and  for  that  of  all  men. 
In  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  without  which  there  would 
be  no  teaching  of  Christ,  —  in  this  all  agree,  —  and  in 
which  Christ  does  not  address  the  sages,  but  the  illiterate 
and  the  tawny-handed,  and  which  is  hedged  in  with  the 
introduction,  "  Whosoever  shall  break  one  of  these  least 
commandments,"  and  with  the  conclusion  that  we  must 
not  spealv,  but  fulfil,  —  in  this  sermon  everything  is  said, 
and  five  commandments  are  given  as  to  how  to  fulfil  the 
teaching. 

In  the  sermon  on  tbe  mount  are  expounded  the  sim- 
plest, easiest,  most  comprehensible  rules  of  the  application 
of  the  love  of  God  and  of  our  neighbours  to  life,  without 
the  recognition  or  fulfilment  of  which  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  of  Christianity. 

And,  no  matter  how  strange  this  may  seem,  after 
eighteen  hundred  years  I  had  to  rediscover  these  rules 
as  something  new.  And  only  when  I  comprehended 
these  rules  did  I  comprehend  the  meaning  of  Christ's 
teaching. 

These  rules  so  marvellously .  embrace  the  whole  life 
of  each  man  and  of  all  humanity  that  a  man  need  but 
imagine  the  fulfilment  of  these  rules  on  earth  in  order 
that  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  may  be  upon  earth. 

Then  analyze  all  these  rules  separately,  applying  them 
to  yourself,  and  you  will  see  that  this  incredibly  blessed 
and  enormous  result  is  obtained  through  the  fulfilment 
of  the  simplest,  most  natural  rules,  which  are  not  only 
easy,  but  even  pleasurable  to  execute. 

Do  you  think  it  is  necessary  to  add  anything  to  these 
rules  in  order  that  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  be  real- 
ized ?     It  is  not. 

Do  you  think  that  it  is  possible  to  reject  one  of  the 


386  LETTER   TO    N.    N. 

rules  without  impairing  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  ? 
It  is  not. 

If  I  did  not  know  anything  of  Christ's  teaching  but 
the  five  rules,  I  should  still  be  as  good  a  Christian  as 
I  am  now. 

Be  not  angry.  Commit  no  debauch.  Do  not  swear. 
Do  not  judge.  Wage  no  war.  In  this  does  the  essence 
of  Christ's  teaching  consist  for  me. 

This  clear  expression  of  Christ's  teaching  has  been 
concealed  from  men,  and  so  humanity  has  always  devi- 
ated from  it  in  two  extreme  directions.  Some,  seeing  If 
Christ's  teaching  the  teaching  of  the  salvation  of  the  soul 
have,  for  the  sake  of  the  grossly  conceived  eternal  life, 
removed  themselves  from  the  world,  caring  only  for  this, 
what  to  do  for  themselves,  how  to  perfect  themselves 
individually,  —  which  would  be  ridiculous,  if  it  were  not 
pitiful.  Tremendous  forces  have  been  wasted  by  these 
people,  —  and  there  have  been  many  of  them,  —  on  what 
is  impossible  and  foolish,  on  doing  good  for  themselves 
individually,  without  other  men. 

Others,  on  the  contrary,  who  did  not  believe  in  the 
future  life,  have  Hved,  the  best  of  them,  only  for  others, 
but  did  not  know  and  did  not  want  to  know  what  was 
necessary  for  themselves,  and  in  the  name  of  what  they 
wanted  the  good  for  others,  or  what  good  they  wanted. 

It  seems  to  me  that  one  thing  is  impossible  without 
the  other ;  a  man  cannot  do  any  good  to  himself,  to  his 
soul,  without  acting  for  others  and  with  others,  as  did 
the  religious  ascetics  and  others,  —  the  best  of  them,  — 
and  he  cannot  do  good  to  men  if  he  does  not  know  what 
he  himself  needs,  and  in  the  name  of  what  he  is  acting, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  public  workers  who  have  no  faith. 

I  love  the  men  of  the  first  order,  but  with  all  the  forces 
of  my  soul  do  I  despise  their  teaching,  and  I  love  very 
much  the  men  of  the  second  category,  though  I  despise 
their  teaching.     Only  that  teaching  has  the  truth  which 


LETTER   TO    N.   N.  387 

points  out  an  activity,  —  life,  —  which  satisfies  the  de- 
mands of  the  soul,  and  which,  at  the  same  time,  is  a  con- 
stant activity  for  the  good  of  others. 

Such  is  the  teaching  of  Christ.  It  is  equally  distant 
from  rehgious  quietism,  from  the  care  for  one's  soul, 
and  from  the  revolutionary  zeal  (the  governmental,  the 
priestly  activity  is  revolutionary)  of  him  who  wants  to 
benefit  others,  though,  at  the  same  time,  he  does  not 
know  wherein  this  true,  indubitable  good  consists. 

The  Christian  life  is  such  that  it  is  impossible  to  do 
good  to  people  except  by  doing  good  to  oneself,  to  one's 
rational  soul,  and  impossible  to  do  good  to  oneself,  except 
by  doing  good  to  one's  neighbours.  The  Christian  life  is 
equally  distant  from  quietism  and  from  excessive  zeal. 

Young  people,  who  are  of  your  turn  of  mind,  are  in- 
clined to  confuse  the  true  Christian  teaching  with  the 
quietism  of  the  superstitious,  and  it  seems  to  them  that 
it  is  very  convenient  and  very  easy  to  reject  the  resistance 
to  evil  through  violence,  and  that  this  causes  the  Chris- 
tian work  to  weaken  and  lose  force.  That  is  not  true. 
You  must  understand  that  a  Christian  renounces  vio- 
lence, not  because  he  does  not  love  the  same  which  you 
desire ;  not  because  he  does  not  see  that  violence  is  the 
first  thing  which  begs  for  recognition  at  the  sight  of  evil ; 
but  because  he  sees  that  violence  removes  him  from  his 
aim,  and  does  not  bring  him  nearer  to  it,  and  that  it  is 
senseless,  as  it  is  senseless  for  a  man  who  wants  to  get 
to  the  water  of  a  spring  with  a  stick  to  strike  the  earth 
which  separates  him  from  the  spring.  For  a  man  who 
denies  violence  it  is  not  easier,  —  on  the  contrary :  it  is 
more  difficult  to  take  a  spade  and  dig,  than  to  strike  the 
earth  with  a  pole.  But  it  is  easier  for  him,  because  he 
knows  full  well  that  by  opposing  evil,  not  with  violence, 
but  with  goodness  and  truth,  he  is  doing  what  he  can, 
fulfilling  the  will  of  the  Father,  according  to  Christ's 
expression. 


388  LETTEK   TO   N.    N. 

It  is  impossible  to  put  fire  out  with  fire,  to  dry  up  water 
with  water,  to  destroy  evil  with  evil.  They  have  been 
doing  that  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  world,  and 
have  reached  the  state  in  which  we  live. 

It  is  time  to  give  up  the  old  method,  and  to  take  hold 
of  the  new,  the  more  so  since  it  is  more  sensible. 

If  there  is  a  motion  forward,  it  is  so  only  thanks  to 
those  who  have  paid  with  good  for  evil. 

What  would  happen  if  only  one-milhonth  part  of  those 
efforts  which  are  employed  by  people  in  order  to  fight 
evil  with  violence  were  employed  for  the  purpose  of  en- 
during evil,  without  taking  part  in  it,  and  of  shedding 
the  light  which  is  given  to  each  ?  If  it  were  so  simply 
from  the  point  of  view  of  experiment ! 

Nothing  has  been  gained  by  the  other  way,  —  so  why 
not  try  this,  the  more  so  since  it  is  clear,  obvious,  and 
joyful? 

Here  is  a  special  example :  let  us  recall  Russia  for  the 
last  twenty  years.  How  much  sincere  desire  of  good 
and  readiness  for  sacrifice  has  been  wasted  by  our  young 
intellectual  classes  in  order  to  establish  the  truth,  to  do 
good  to  men !  And  what  has  been  done  ?  Nothing. 
Worse  than  nothing.  They  have  wasted  enormous  spirit- 
ual forces.  The  poles  are  broken  and  the  earth  is  beaten 
down  harder  than  ever,  so  that  the  spade  does  not  enter 
into  it. 

Instead  of  those  terrible  sacrifices  which  the  youths 
have  brought,  instead  of  shooting,  causing  explosions, 
running  printing  offices,  these  men  need  but  believe  in 
Christ's  teaching,  that  is,  consider  that  the  Christian  hfe 
is  the  one  rational  life.  What  if,  instead  of  that  terrible 
tension  of  forces,  one,  two,  ten,  dozens,  hundreds  of  men 
should  say,  in  reply  w  the  call  to  military  service,  "  We 
cannot  serve  as  murderers,  because  we  believe  in  Christ's 
teaching,  that  teaching  which  we  profess  and  which  for- 
bids it  by  a  special  commandment "  ?     The  same  they 


LETTER   TO   N.   N.  389 

might  say  in  respect  to  the  oath  and  to  the  courts ;  the 
same  they  might  say  and  do  in  respect  to  the  violence 
which  asserts  private  possession.  What  would  happen 
in  this  case  I  do  not  know ;  but  I  know  that  it  would 
advance  matters. 

I  know  that  there  is  one  truly  fruitful  way,  and  that 
is  not  to  do  what  is  contrary  to  Christ's  teaching,  but 
outright  and  openly  to  profess  it,  not  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  any  external  aims,  but  for  one's  own  inward 
satisfaction,  which  consists  in  not  doing  any  evil  to 
others,  as  long  as  I  am  not  yet  able  to  do  them  good. 

Here  is  my  answer  to  your  questions  as  to  what  we 
should  strive  after.  We  should  strive  to  carry  out  Christ's 
rules  for  ourselves  and  disclose  to  men  the  light  and  the 
joy  of  their  execution.  All  this  is,  however,  much  better 
expressed  in  the  Gospel  (Matt.  v.  13-16). 

I  foresee  another  objection.  You  will  say :  "  It  is  not 
clear  how  to  carry  out  these  rules,  and  what  they  will 
bring  us  to.  How  are  we  according  to  these  rules  to 
bear  ourselves  in  relation  to  property,  to  the  authorities, 
to  international  relations  ? 

Do  not  think  that  there  is  anything  obscure  with 
Christ.     Everything  is  as  clear  as  daylight. 

The  relation  to  the  authorities  is  expressed  in  the  story 
of  the  penny.  Money  —  property  —  is  a  non-Christian 
matter.  It  comes  from  the  authorities,  give  it  back  to 
the  authorities  ;  but  your  soul  is  your  own,  it  is  from  the 
God  of  truth,  and  so  give  to  no  one  but  God  your  works, 
your  rational  freedom.  They  can  kill  you,  but  they  can- 
not compel  you  to  kill,  to  do  an  un-Christian  deed. 

According  to  the  Gospel  there  is  no  property,  and  woe 
to  those  who  have  it,  that  is,  they  fare  badly.  In  rela- 
tion to  property,  a  Christian  can  only  refuse  to  take  part 
in  acts  of  violence  which  are  committed  in  the  name  of 
property,  and  may  explain  to  others  that  property  is  a 
myth,  that  there  is  no  property,  but  that  there  is  a  habit- 


390  LETTER    TO    N.    N. 

.  i 

ual  act  of  violence  in  relation  to  the  use  of  things,  which 
people  call  property,  and  which  is  bad.  There  can  be  no 
question  of  property  for  a  man  who  will  give  up  his  cloak 
when  they  want  to  take  his  coat  from  him. 

Nor  can  there  be  any  question  about  international 
relations.  All  men  are  brothers,  —  all  are  alike  ;  and  if 
a  Zulu  comes  and  wants  to  roast  my  children,  there  is 
only  one  thing  which  I  can  do,  and  that  is,  to  impress 
upon  the  Zulu  that  this  is  not  advantageous  and  good  for 
him,  —  to  impress  this  upon  him,  while  submitting  to 
his  force,  —  the  more  so  since  there  is  no  profit  in  strug- 
gling with  a  Zulu :  either  he  will  overcome  me  and  will 
roast  more  of  my  children,  or  I  shall  overcome  him,  and 
my  children  will  get  ill  to-morrow  and  die  in  worse 
agonies  of  disease. 

There  is  profit  in  it,  because  by  submitting  I  certainly 
do  better,  while  by  resisting  I  do  something  doubtful. 

So  here  is  my  answer :  the  best  that  we  can  do  is  for 
us  to  carry  out  the  whole  teaching  of  Christ.  In  order  to 
do  so,  we  must  be  convinced  that  it  is  the  truth  both  for 
humanity  at  large  and  for  each  of  us  in  particular. 

Have  you  that  faith  ? 

There  are  two  more  objections,  or  questions,  which,  I 
imagine,  you  will  bring  forward.  The  first  is  this,  that 
if  we  shall  submit,  as  I  say,  to  a  Zulu  or  a  policeman, 
and  shall  give  to  a  bad  man  everything  which  he  may 
want  to  take  from  me ;  if  we  are  not  to  take  part  in  the 
governmental  institution  of  the  courts,  of  schools,  of  uni- 
versities, and  are  not  to  recognize  our  property,  —  we  shall 
fall  to  the  lowest  round  of  the  social  ladder,  and  shall  be 
trampled  upon  and  crushed :  we  shall  be  mendicants, 
tramps,  and  the  light  which  is  in  us  will  be  lost  in  vain, 
and  no  one  will  see  it,  and  so  would  it  not  be  better  to 
hold  ourselves  on  a  certain  level  of  independence  from 
want,  of  a  possibility  of  education  and  of  communion 
with  as  large  a  ciicle  of  men  as  possible  (the  press)  ? 


LETTER  TO   N.   N.  391 

Indeed,  so  it  seems,  but  it  only  seems  so.  And  it 
seems  so  because  we  value  highly  our  comforts  of  life, 
our  education,  and  all  those  imaginary  joys  which  they 
furnish  us,  and  we  temporize  when  we  say  so.  It  is 
not  true,  because,  no  matter  on  what  level  a  man  may 
stand,  he  will  always  be  with  men,  and  so  able  to  do  good 
to  them.  But  whether  the  professors  of  a  university 
are  better,  or  the  inmates  of  the  night  lodging-houses 
are  more  important  for  the  work  of  Christianity,  —  that 
is  a  question  which  no  man  can  decide.  In  favour  of  the 
poor  speaks  my  own  sentiment  and  Christ's  example. 
Only  the  poor  can  preach  the  Gospel,  that  is,  teach  the 
rational  life.  I  can  discuss  beautifully  and  be  sincere, 
but  no  man  will  ever  believe  me,  so  long  as  he  sees  that 
I,  living  in  a  mansion,  spend  with  my  family  in  a  day 
the  amount  of  a  year's  supply  for  an  indigent  family. 
And  as  regards  our  vaunted  education,  it  is  time  to  stop 
speaking  of  it  as  of  a  good.  It  will  easily  spoil  ninety-nine 
of  every  hundred  men,  and  it  will  certainly  not  add 
anything  to  one  man.  You  no  doubt  know  about 
Syutaev.  Here  is  an  illiterate  peasant,  but  his  influence 
on  people,  on  our  intellectual  classes,  is  greater  and  more 
important  than  that  of  all  the  Kussian  savants  and 
writers,  with  all  their  Pvishkins  and  Byelinskis  taken 
together,  from  Tredyakovski  until  our  day.  We  shall  not 
lose  much.  And  every  one  that  hath  forsaken  houses,  or 
brethren,  or  sisters,  or  father,  or  mother,  or  wife,  or  chil- 
dren, shall  receive  a  hundred  times  more  houses,  and  a 
father  here  in  this  world,  and  also  everlasting  hfe.  Many 
that  are  first  shall  be  last  (Matt.  xix.  29,  30). 

Now  another  question,  which  directly,  involuntarily 
results  from  it :  "  Well,  and  you.  Lev  Nikolaevich  ?  You 
preach  indeed,  but  how  do  you  carry  it  out  ? "  This  is  a 
most  natural  question  which  people  always  put  to  me 
and  with  which  they  triumphantly  close  my  mouth. 

"  You  preach,  but  how  do  you  live  ?  "     And  I  answer 


392  LETTER    TO    N.    N. 

that  I  do  not  preach  and  cannot  preach,  though  I  passion- 
ately wish  to  do  so. 

I  could  preach  by  my  works,  but  my  works  are  bad. 
What  I  speak  is  not  a  preaching,  but  only  a  rebuttal  of 
the  false  understanding  of  the  Christian  teaching  and  the 
explanation  of  its  real  meaning.  Its  meaning  does  not 
consist  in  reorganizing  society  in  its  name  through 
the  exercise  of  force ;  its  meaning  consists  in  finding  the 
meaning  of  hfe  in  this  world. 

The  fulfilment  of  the  five  commandments  gives  this 
meaning. 

If  you  want  to  be  a  Christian,  you  must  fulfil  these 
commandments ;  and  if  you  do  not  want  to  fulfil  them, 
do  not  speak  to  me  of  Christianity,  outside  of  the  fulfil- 
ment of  these  commandments. 

"  But,"  people  say  to  me,  "  if  you  find  that  outside 
of  the  fulfilment  of  the  Christian  teaching  there  is  no 
rational  life,  and  you  love  this  rational  life,  why  do  you 
not  fulfil  the  commandments  ?  " 

I  answer  that  I  am  guilty  and  wretched,  and  that  I 
deserve  contempt  for  not  fulfilling  them,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  not  so  much  in  justification  as  in  explanation  of 
my  inconsistency,  I  say :  Look  at  my  former  and  at  my 
present  Ufe,  and  you  will  see  that  I  am  trying  to  fulfil. 
I  have  not  fulfilled  one  ten  -thousandth  part,  it  is  true,  and 
I  am  to  blame,  but  I  have  not  fulfilled  it,  not  because  I 
did  not  want  to,  but  because  I  could  not.  Accuse  me,  — 
I  do  so  myself,  —  but  accuse  me  only,  and  not  the  path 
over  which  I  walk,  and  which  I  point  out  to  those  who 
ask  me  where,  in  my  opinion,  the  path  is. 

If  I  know  the  way  home  and  walk  on  it,  drunk,  totter- 
ing from  side  to  side,  does  it  follow  from  this  that  the 
path  over  which  I  am  travelling  is  not  right  ? 

If  it  is  not  right,  —  show  me  another ;  but  if  I  have 
lost  my  way  and  am  tottering,  help  me,  hold  me  on  the 
right  path,  even  as  I  am  prepared  to  hold  you  up,  and  do 


LETTER  TO   N.   N.  393 

not  push  me  off,  do  not  rejoice  because  I  have  lost  my 
way,  do  not  shout  in  glee  : 

"  There  he  says  that  he  is  going  home,  and  yet  he  is 
making  for  the  swamp  ! " 

Do  not  rejoice  at  this,  but  help  me,  assist  me  !  You 
are  not  yourselves  wills-o'-the-wisp,  but  men  who  are 
making  for  home  !  ^ 

I  am  one,  and  I  certainly  do  not  wish  to  go  into  the 
swamp. 

Help  me  !  My  heart  bursts  from  despair,  because  we 
have  all  gone  astray ;  and  when  I  struggle  with  all  my 
might  and  main,  you,  at  every  deviation  of  mine,  instead 
of  pitying  yourself  and  me,  push  me  into  the  swamp  and 
shout  in  delight : 

"  See,  he  is  in  the  swamp  with  us  ! " 

Such  is  my  relation  to  the  teaching  and  its  fulfilment. 
I  try  with  all  my  power  to  fulfil  it,  and  on  every  failure 
to  fulfil  it,  I  not  only  repent,  but  implore  aid  so  as  to  be 
able  to  fulfil,  and  with  joy  meet  every  man  who  like  me 
seeks  the  path,  and  obey  him. 

If  you  read  what  1  send  you,  you  will  also  understand 
the  contents  of  this  letter. 

Write  to  me.  I  am  very  glad  to  commune  with  you, 
and  will  in  agitation  await  your  answer. 

1887. 


INTRODUCTION    TO    T.   M. 
BONDAREV'S    TEACHING 

1888 


INTRODUCTION    TO    T.    M. 
BONDAREV'S    TEACHING 


This  work  is  offered  here  precisely  in  the  form  in 
which  it  was  written.  The  only  difference  from  the 
original  is  this,  that  for  its  peculiar  orthography  is  substi- 
tuted the  one  which  is  generally  used  in  books,  and  also 
this,  that  the  whole  work  is  divided  into  two  parts,  the 
exposition  and  the  supplement.  In  the  supplement  I 
have  separated  what  to  me  appeared  as  repetition  or 
departure  from  the  exposition  of  the  subject  itself. 

This  work  seems  to  me  very  remarkable  on  account  of 
its  power,  and  clearness,  and  beauty  of  language,  and 
power  of  sincerity  of  conviction,  which  may  be  seen  in 
every  line,  and,  above  all,  on  account  of  the  importance, 
correctness,  and  profundity  of  the  fundamental  idea. 

The  fundamental  idea  of  this  work  is  this : 

In  all  the  affairs  of  life  it  is  not  important  to  know 
what  it  is  that  is  good  and  necessary,  but  what  of  all 
good  and  necessary  things  or  acts  is  of  the  very  first  im- 
portance, what  of  a  second,  what  of  a  third  importance, 
and  so  forth.  If  this  is  true  in  affairs  of  life,  it  is  still 
more  true  in  matters  of  faith,  which  defines  the  duties  of 
man. 

Tatian,  a  teacher  of  the  first  times  of  the  church,  says 
that  the  misfortune  of  men  is  due  not  so  much  to  the 
fact  that  men  do  not  know  God  as  to  the  fact  that  they 

397 


398  BONDAEEV'S    TEACHING 

recognize  a  false  God  —  that  they  recognize  as  a  god 
what  is  not  God. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  doctrine  of  men's  obHgations. 

Men's  misfortune  and  evil  is  not  due  so  much  to  the 
fact  that  men  do  not  know  their  duties,  as  to  the  fact 
that  they  recognize  false  duties ;  that  they  recognize  as 
their  duty  what  is  not  their  duty,  and  do  not  recognize 
as  their  duty  what  is  their  chief  duty. 

Bondar^v  asserts  that  men's  misfortunes  and  evil  are 
due  to  this,  that  they  have  recognized  as  their  religious 
duties  many  idle  and  harmful  decrees,  and  have  forgotten 
and  concealed  from  themselves  and  others  their  chief, 
first,  indubitable  duty,  which  is  expressed  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Holy  Scripture :  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt 
thou  eat  bread. 

For  people  who  believe  in  the  sacredness  and  infallibil- 
ity of  God's  word,  as  expressed  in  the  Bible,  this  com- 
mandment, given  by  God  Himself,  and  nowhere  abolished, 
is  a  sufficient  proof  of  its  truth. 

But  for  people  who  do  not  acknowledge  Holy  Scripture 
the  meaning  and  truth  of  this  proposition,  if  we  will  only 
view  it  without  prejudice,  as  a  simple  and  not  super- 
natural expression  of  human  wisdom,  is  proved  by  the 
analysis  of  the  conditions  of  human  hfe,  as  Bondar^v 
proves  it  in  this  work  of  his. 

An  obstacle  to  such  an  analysis  is  unfortunately  found 
in  this,  that  many  of  us  have  become  so  accustomed  to 
the  perverse  and  senseless  interpretations  by  the  theo- 
logians of  the  words  of  Holy  Scripture,  that  the  mere 
mention  that  a  certain  proposition  coincides  with  Holy 
Scripture  serves  as  a  cause  for  looking  with  contempt  on 
such  a  proposition. 

"  What  does  Holy  Scripture  mean  to  me  ?  "We  know 
that  anything  you  please  may  be  based  on  it,  and  that 
everything  in  it  is  a  lie." 

But  that  is  not  true.     It  is  certainly  not  the  fault  of 


BONDAREV'S    TEACHING  399 

Holy  Scripture  if  people  have  interpreted  it  wrongly,  and 
a  man  who  tells  a  truth  is  not  to  blame,  because  he 
expressed  a  truth  which  has  been  given  before,  and  espe- 
cially in  Holy  Scripture.  We  must  not  forget  that  if  we 
admit  that  what  is  called  Holy  Scripture  is  not  the 
product  of  God,  but  of  men,  there  must  be  some  good 
reason  why  this  human  production,  and  not  any  other, 
has  been  accepted  by  men  as  the  writing  of  God  Himself. 
This  reason  is  clear. 

This  Scripture  is  by  superstitious  persons  called  divine, 
because  it  is  higher  than  anything  which  men  knew,  and 
also  because  this  Scripture,  despite  the  fact  that  men 
have  all  the  time  denied  it,  has  come  down  to  us  and  con- 
tinues to  be  considered  divine.  It  is  called  divine  and 
has  come  down  to  us,  only  because  in  it  is  contained  the 
highest  human  intelhgence.  And  such  is  in  many  places 
the  writing  which  is  called  the  Bible.  And  such  is  the 
forgotten  and  omitted  utterance,  which  is  not  understood 
in  its  real  meaning,  and  which  Bondarev  explains  and 
puts  in  his  .corner-stone  chapter. 

This  utterance  and  the  whole  world  of  the  life  in  Para- 
dise is  generally  comprehended  in  its  direct  meaning, 
namely,  that  all  actually  happened  as  described,  whereas 
the  significance  of  the  whole  passage  is  this,  that  in  a 
figurative  form  it  presents  those  as  it  were  contradictory 
tendencies  which  are  found  in  human  nature. 

Man  is  afraid  of  death  and  is  subject  to  it ;  a  man  who 
does  not  know  good  and  evil  seems  to  be  happy,  but  he 
irrepressibly  tends  to  this  knowledge :  man  loves  idleness 
and  the  gratification  of  passions  without  suffering,  and 
yet  it  is  only  labour  and  suffering  that  give  life  to  him 
and  to  his  race. 

This  utterance  is  not  important  because  it  was  pre- 
sumably made  by  God  to  Adam  himself,  but  because  it 
is  true  and  confirms  one  of  the  unquestionable  laws  of 
human  life. 


400  BONDAREV'S    TEACHING 

The  law  of  gravity  is  not  true  because  it  was  enun- 
ciated by  Newton,  but  I  know  Newton  and  am  thankful 
to  him  because  he  discovered  for  me  the  eternal  law 
which  gave  me  an  answer  to  a  whole  series  of  phenomena. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  law,  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face 
shalt  thou  eat  bread. 

It  is  a  law  which  elucidates  to  me  a  whole  series  of 
phenomena.  And,  having  once  come  to  understand  it,  I 
can  no  louger  forget  it,  and  am  thankful  to  him  who  has 
revealed  it  to  me.  This  law  seems  very  simple  and  long 
known ;  but  it  only  seems  so,  and  to  convince  ourselves 
of  the  opposite,  we  need  but  look  around  us.  Men  not 
only  fail  to  recognize  this  law,  but  even  recognize  the 
very  opposite.  In  conformity  with  their  faith,  all  men  — 
from  the  king  to  the  beggar  —  do  not  strive  to  fulfil  this 
law,  but  to  avoid  fulfilling  it.  This  work  of  Bondart^v  is 
devoted  to  the  elucidation  of  the  eternity  and  uuchange- 
ableness  of  this  law  and  the  inevitableness  of  the  calamities 
arising  from  a  departure  from  it. 

Bondar^v  calls  this  law  an  original  law  and  chief  of  all 
other  laws.  Bondart^v  proves  that  sin  (that  is,  error,  false 
act)  is  due  only  to  a  departure  from  this  law.  Of  all  the 
positive  duties  of  man,  Bondar^v  regards  it  as  the  chief, 
first,  and  invariable  duty  of  each  man  to  earn  his  bread 
with  his  own  hands  (meaning  by  bread  every  hard,  manual 
labour,  necessary  for  man's  salvation  from  starvation  and 
cold,  that  is,  his  food,  and  drink,  and  raiment,  and  house, 
and  fuel). 

Bondar^v's  fundamental  idea  is  that  this  law  (that  a 
man  must  work  in  order  to  live),  which  heretofore  has 
been  acknowledged  as  a  necessity,  must  be  recognized  as 
a  good  and  invariable  law  of  human  life. 

This  law  must  be  recognized  like  any  rehgious  law,  like 
the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  the  circumcision  among  the 
Jews,  the  fulfilment  of  the  sacraments,  the  fasts  of  the  ec- 
clesiastic Christians,  the  fivefold  prayer  and  fasting  among 


BONDAREV'S    TEACHING  401 

the  Mohammedans.  Bondar^v  says  in  one  place  that  if 
people  recognize  the  bread  work  as  their  rehgious  obliga- 
tion, no  private,  special  occupations  can  interfere  with  the 
execution  of  this  work,  just  as  no  special  occupations  can 
keep  the  people  of  the  church  from  executing  the  idleness 
of  their  holidays. 

In  all,  more  than  eighty  holidays  are  counted,  and  to 
do  the  bread  work  only  forty  days  are  needed  according 
to  Bon  dare  v's  calculation.  No  matter  how  strange  it  may 
at  first  appear  that  such  a  simple,  all-intelligible,  artless 
means  might  Sorve  as  a  salvation  from  the  endless  exist- 
ing evils  of  humanity,  it  is  still  more  strange,  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it,  how  we,  by  leaving  it,  may  seek 
a  cure  for  our  evils  in  various  devices  and  conceits.  But 
reflect  on  the  matter,  and  you  will  see  that  it  is  so. 

A  man  ought  not  to  put  a  bottom  into  a  vat  and  ought 
to  invent  some  more  cunning  means  for  retaining  the 
water.  Such  are  all  our  cares  about  the  cure  of  existing 
evils.  Indeed,  whence  comes  all  the  misery  of  men,  if  we 
exclude  from  the  number  of  miseries  those  which  men 
have  directly  inflicted  upon  each  other  by  means  of  mur- 
ders, executions,  prisons,  frights,  and  all  kinds  of  cruelties, 
in  which  they  err  by  not  abstaining  from  violence  ? 

All  the  misery  of  men,  with  the  exception  of  direct 
violence,  is  due  to  hunger,  to  all  kinds  of  privations,  to 
despair  in  work,  and,  by  the  side  of  these,  to  excesses,  idle- 
ness, and  vices  caused  by  them. 

What  more  sacred  duty  can  man  have  than  cooperating 
in  the  abolition  of  this  inequality,  these  calamities,  this 
need  of  some,  and  this  temptation  in  others  ?  And  how 
can  a  man  cooperate  in  the  abolition  of  these  calamities,  if 
not  by  a  participation  in  labour  which  meets  men's  needs, 
and  by  removing  from  oneself  all  superabundance  and 
idleness,  which  are  productive  of  vices  and  temptations, 
that  is,  if  not  by  doing  bread  work,  by  supporting  oneself 
with  one's  own  hands,  as  Bondardv  says  ? 


402  BONDAR^V'S    TEACHING 

We  are  so  entangled  by  having  created  for  ourselves  so 
many  laws,  religious,  and  social,  and  domestic,  so  many 
rules,  as  Isaiah  says,  ''Eule  upon  rule,  here  a  rule,  and 
there  a  rule,"  that  we  have  entirely  lost  the  meaning  of 
what  is  good  and  what  bad. 

A  man  celebrates  mass,  a  second  collects  an  army  or 
taxes  for  himself,  a  third  judges,  a  fourth  learns  out  of 
books,  a  fifth  cures,  a  sixth  teaches  people,  and  under 
these  pretexts  they  free  themselves  from  bread  work  and 
impose  it  upon  others,  forgetting  that  people  die  from 
exertion,  labour,  and  hunger,  and  that,  to  have  men 
celebrate  mass,  defend  us  by  means  of  an  army,  sit  in 
judgment,  cure,  and  teach,  it  is  necessary  above  all  else 
that  men  should  not  starve.  We  forget  that  there  may  be 
many  duties,  but  that  among  them  there  is  one  that  is  first 
and  one  that  is  last,  and  that  it  is  not  possible  to  fulfil 
the  last  without  having  fulfilled  the  first,  just  as  it  is  im- 
possible to  harrow  before  ploughing. 

It  is  to  this  first  indubitable  duty  in  the  sphere  of 
practical  activity  that  Bondar^v's  teaching  takes  us.  Bon- 
dar^v  shows  that  the  execution  of  this  duty  does  not 
interfere  with  anything,  presents  no  obstacles,  and  at  the 
same  time  saves  men  from  misery,  want,  and  temptations. 
The  fulfilment  of  this  duty  first  of  all  destroys  that 
strange  division  into  two  classes  who  hate  each  other  and 
with  flattery  conceal  their  mutual  hatred.  Bread  labour, 
says  Bondar^v,  equalizes  all  and  will  chp  the  wings  of 
luxury  and  of  lust. 

It  is  impossible  to  plough  and  dig  wells  in  costly  gar- 
ments and  with  clean  hands,  and  while  living  on  dainty 
food.  The  occupation  with  the  holy  work  which  is  com- 
mon to  all  men  will  bring  them  together.  Bread  labour, 
says  Bondar^v,  is  a  remedy  which  saves  humanity.  If 
men  recognized  this  original  law  as  a  divine  and  un- 
changeable law ;  if  each  man  recognized  bread  labour, 
that  is,  his  support  by  means  of  his  own  labour,  as  his 


BONDAREV'S    TEACHING  403 

unalterable  duty,  —  all  men  would  unite  in  the  faith  of 
the  one  God,  in  the  love  of  one  another,  and  would  des- 
troy the  calamities  which  crush  men. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  order  of  things  which  rec- 
ognizes the  very  opposite,  namely,  that  wealth  —  the 
means  for  not  doing  bread  labour  —  is  either  a  divioe 
blessing  or  a  higher  social  position,  that,  without  analyzing 
this  position,  we  feel  like  recognizing  it  as  narrow,  one- 
sided, idle,  stupid. 

But  we  must  give  the  matter  a  serious  consideration 
and  analyze  this  position,  to  see  w^hether  it  is  just.  We 
analyze  all  kinds  of  rehgious  and  political  theories,  and 
we  will  also  analyze  Bondarev's  theory  as  a  theory.  We 
shall  see  what  will  happen,  if,  according  to  Bondarev's 
idea,  the  rehgious  propaganda  will  direct  its  forces  to  the 
elucidation  of  this  law,  and  all  men  will  recognize  as 
holy  the  original  law  of  labour.  What  will  happen 
then? 

All  will  work  and  eat  the  bread  of  their  labours,  and 
bread  and  objects  of  prime  necessity  will  not  be  objects 
of  purchase  and  sale.  What  will  happen  then  ?  What 
will  happen  will  be  this,  that  there  will  be  no  people  who 
perish  from  want.  If  one  man  does  not  earn  enough  for 
his  own  food  and  for  that  of  his  family,  another  man  will 
give  it  to  him.  He  will  give  it  to  him,  because  he  can 
do  nothing  else  with  the  bread,  since  it  cannot  be  sold. 
What  will  happen  will  be  tliis,  that  man  will  not  have 
the  temptation,  the  necessity  of  acquiring  bread  by  means 
of  cunning  or  violence,  because  he  is  not  otherwise  pro- 
vided for.  And  not  having  this  temptation,  he  will  not 
employ  violence  or  cunning.  That  will  not  be  necessary, 
as  it  is  now. 

If  he  shall  use  cunning  or  violence,  he  will  use  them 
only  because  he  likes  cunning  and  violence,  and  not  be- 
cause he  has  to,  as  is  the  case  now. 

Nor  will  the  feeble,  who  for  some  reason  are  unable  to 


404  BONDAREV'S   TEACHING 

earn  their  bread,  or  who  for  some  reason  have  lost  it,  need 
to  sell  themselves,  their  labour,  and  sometimes  their  souls, 
for  the  sake  of  earning  bread. 

There  will  not  exist  the  present  tendency  of  all  to  free 
themselves  from  bread  labour  and  to  impose  it  upon  others, 
a  tendency  to  crush  the  feeble  with  labour  and  to  free  the 
strong  from  all  work. 

There  will  not  be  that  mood  of  human  thought  which 
directs  all  the  efforts  of  the  mind,  not  on  alleviating  the 
labour  of  the  labouring,  but  on  alleviating  and  adorning 
the  idleness  of  the  idle. 

The  participation  of  all  in  bread  labour  and  the  recog- 
nition of  the  same  as  the  chief  of  all  human  affairs  pro- 
duces the  same  effect  that  a  man  would  produce  with  a 
cart  which  some  fooHsh  people  have  been  drawing  with 
the  wheels  up,  when  he  turns  it  down  and  puts  it  on  its 
wheels,  and  does  not  break  the  cart,  but  makes  it  go 
easily.  But  our  hfe,  with  the  contempt  for  bread  labour 
and  its  rejection,  and  our  corrections  of  this  false  life,  is  a 
cart  which  we  are  dragging  with  its  wheels  up.  All  our 
corrections  of  the  matter  are  of  no  avail,  so  long  as  we  do 
not  turn  the  cart  over  and  place  it  properly. 

Such  is  Bondar^v's  idea,  which  I  share  in  full. 

His  idea  presents  itself  to  me  also  in  this  manner. 

There  was  a  time  when  men  ate  one  another.  The 
consciousness  of  the  unity  of  all  men  was  developed  to 
such  an  extent  that  this  became  impossible  to  men,  and 
they  stopped  eating  one  another.  Then  there  was  a  time 
when  people  took  the  labour  of  others  by  force  and 
turned  men  into  slavery.  Men's  consciousness  developed 
to  such  an  extent  that  this  became  impossible.  This 
form  of  violence,  though  surreptitiously  retained,  has 
been  destroyed  in  its  gross  manifestations :  man  no 
longer  openly  takes  possession  of  another  man's  labour. 
In  our  day  there  exists  that  form  of  violence  by  which 
men,  exploiting  the  want  of  others,  subject  them  to  them- 


BONDAKEV'S    TEACHING  405 

selves.  According  to  Bondar^v's  idea  there  is  now  arriv- 
ing the  time  of  that  consciousness  of  the  unity  of  men, 
when  it  will  become  impossible  for  men, to  exploit  the 
want,  that  is,  the  hunger  and  the  cold,  of  others,  in  order 
to  subject  them  to  themselves,  and  when  men,  by  thus 
recognizing  as  obligatory  the  law  of  bread  labour  for  each, 
will  recognize  as  their  duty  unconditionally,  without  the 
sale  of  bread  (articles  of  prime  necessity),  to  feed,  and 
clothe,  and  warm  one  another. 

From  still  another  side  I  look  upon  this  work  of 
Boudarev's  like  this.  We  frequently  have  occasion  to 
hear  judgments  of  the  insufficiency  of  mere  negative 
laws  or  commandments,  that  is,  of  rules  as  to  what  not 
to  do.  People  say :  "  We  must  have  positive  laws  or 
commandments,  we  need  rules  as  to  what  we  should  do. ' 
They  say  that  the  five  commandments  of  Christ,  —  (1)  not 
to  regard  any  one  as  insignificant  or  senseless,  and  not  to 
be  angry  with  any  one,  (2)  not  to  look  upon  cohabitation 
as  a  subject  of  enjoyment,  not  to  abandon  the  mate  with 
whom  one  has  come  together  once,  (3)  not  to  swear  to 
any  one  in  anything,  not  to  bind  one's  will,  (4)  to  endure 
offences  and  not  resist  them  by  means  of  violence,  and 
(5)  not  to  consider  any  men  enemies,  and  to  love  the 
enemies  like  our  neighbours,  —  they  say  that  all  men 
ascribe  to  these  five  commandments  of  Christ  a  meaning 
about  what  ought  not  to  be  done,  and  that  there  is  no 
commandment  or  law  which  prescribes  what  ought  to  be 
done. 

Indeed,  it  may  appear  strange  why  there  are  in  Christ's 
teaching  no  definite  commandments  as  to  what  ought  to 
be  done.  But  this  may  appear  strange  only  to  him  who 
does  not  beheve  in  Christ's  teaching  itself,  which  is  not 
contained  in  the  five  commandments,  but  in  the  teaching 
of  the  truth  itself. 

The  teaching  of  the  truth,  as  expressed  by  Christ,  is 
not  to  be  found  in  the  laws  about  the  commandments,  — 


406  BONDAREV  S    TEACHING 

it  is  to  be  found  in  this  alone,  —  in  the  meaning  which 
is  ascribed  to  hfe. 

The  meaning  of  this  teaching  is  in  this  alone,  that  hfe 
and  the  good  of  hfe  are  not  to  be  found  in  personal  hap- 
piness, as  some  people  think,  but  in  serving  God  and 
men.  This  proposition  is  not  a  prescription  which  is  to 
be  carried  out  in  order  to  obtain  rewards  for  its  fulfil- 
ment ;  it  is  not  a  mystical  expression  of  something  mys- 
terious, but  the  disclosure  of  a  formerly  concealed  law  of 
life;  it  is  an  indication  of  this,  that  life  can  be  a  good 
only  with  such  a  comprehension  of  life.  And  so  all  the 
positive  teaching  of  Christ  is  expressed  in  this,  Love  God 
and  thy  neighbour  as  thyself.  There  can  be  no  elucida- 
tions of  this  proposition.     It  is  one,  because  it  is  all ! 

Christ's  laws  and  commandments,  like  the  Jewish  and 
Buddhist  laws  and  commandments,  are  only  indications  of 
those  conditions  in  which  the  temptations  of  the  world 
take  men  away  from  the  true  comprehension  of  life. 
And  so  there  can  be  mauv  laws  and  commandments ;  but 
there  can  be  but  one  positive  teaching  about  life,  about 
what  ought  to  be  done. 

The  life  of  each  man  is  a  motion  somewhere ;  whether 
a  man  wants  to  or  not,  he  moves,  he  lives.  Christ  shows 
man  his  path,  and  at  the  same  time  shows  those  devia- 
tions from  the  true  path  which  may  lead  him  on  the 
false  road ;  of  such  indications  there  may  be  many,  they 
are  the  commandments.  Christ  gives  five  such  command- 
ments, and  those  which  He  gives  are  such  that  until  now 
it  has  been  impossible  to  add  one,  or  detract  one  from 
them.  But  there  is  given  but  one  indication  of  the  direc- 
tion of  the  road,  just  as  there  can  be  but  one  straight  line 
which  indicates  direction. 

Consequently  the  idea  that  in  Christ's  teaching  there 
are  only  negative  commandments,  and  none  that  are  posi- 
tive is  correct  for  those  only  who  do  not  know  or  do  not 
beheve  in  the  teaching  of  the  truth  itself,  in  the  direction 


BONDAREV'S   TEACHING  407 

itself  of  the  true  path  of  life,  as  pointed  out  by  Christ. 
But  the  people  who  believe  in  the  truth  of  the  path  of 
life,  as  pointed  out  by  Christ,  cannot  look  for  positive 
commandments  in  His  teaching. 

The  whole  positive  activity,  the  most  varied,  which 
results  from  the  teaching  of  the  true  path  of  life,  is  clear 
and  always  indisputably  determined  for  them.  Men  who 
believe  in  the  path  of  life  are,  according  to  Christ's  utter- 
ance, like  a  spring  of  living  water,  that  is,  Hke  a  spring 
welhng  up  from  the  ground.  Their  whole  activity  resem- 
bles the  flowing  of  water  which  runs  everywhere  in  spite 
of  the  obstacles  which  detain  it.  A  man  who  believes  in 
Christ's  teaching  can  as  little  ask  what  he  is  positively 
to  do,  as  the  spring  of  water  can,  which  is  welling  up 
from  the  earth.  It  flows,  watering  the  earth,  grass,  trees, 
birds,  animals,  men.  The  same  does  a  man  who  beheves 
in  Christ's  teaching  about  life. 

A  man  who  believes  in  Christ's  teaching  will  not  ask 
what  to  do.  Love,  which  will  become  the  power  of  his 
life,  will  show  him  correctly  and  indubitably  when  and 
what  to  do  first,  and  what  last. 

To  say  nothing  of  those  indications  with  which  Christ's 
teaching  and  our  heart  are  filled,  that  the  first  and  most 
exacting  work  of  love  consists  in  giving  food  to  the  hun- 
gry and  drink  to  the  thirsty,  clothing  the  naked,  helping 
the  poor  and  the  imprisoned,  —  the  whole  of  Christ's 
teaching,  and  reason,  and  conscience,  and  feeling,  every- 
thing urges  us,  before  all  other  works  of  love  toward  the 
Hving,  to  support  this  hfe  of  our  brothers,  —  to  free  them 
from  sufi'ering  and  death,  which  overcome  them  in  their 
unequal  struggle  with  Nature,  —  that  is,  it  urges  us  on  to 
the  most  necessary  work  for  the  hfe  of  men,  —  to  the 
simplest,  foremost,  gross,  hard  labour  on  the  land. 

As  the  spring  of  water  cannot  ask  whither  to  send  its 
water,  whether  to  spurt  the  water  upward  on  the  grass 
and  the  leaves  of  the  trees,  or  to  pour  forth  downward  to 


408  BONDAKEV's    TEACHING 

the  roots  of  the  grass  and  the  trees,  even  so  man  who 
believes  in  the  teaching  of  the  truth  cannot  ask  what  he 
must  do  first,  whether  to  instruct  the  people,  to  defend 
them,  to  give  them  the  pleasures  of  life,  or  to  support 
them  who  are  perishing  from  want.  And  just  as  the 
spring  flows  on  the  surface  and  fills  the  ponds  and  gives 
the  animals  and  men  to  drink  only  after  it  has  watered 
the  earth,  so  a  man  who  beheves  in  the  teaching  of  the 
truth  can  cooperate  with  the  less  pressing  demands  of 
men  only  after  he  has  satisfied  the  first  demand,  that  is, 
after  he  has  contributed  to  their  support,  to  their  libera- 
tion from  ruin,  in  consequence  of  a  struggle  with  want. 
A  man  who  professes  the  teaching  of  truth  and  of  love 
not  in  words,  but  in  deeds,  cannot  be  mistaken  as  to  where 
he  must  first  of  all  direct  his  activity.  A  man  who  posits 
the  meaning  of  life  in  the  service  of  others  can  never 
make  the  mistake  of  beginning  to  serve  a  hungry  and 
freezing  man  by  writing  resolutions,  casting  cannon,  man- 
ufacturing elegant  articles,  or  playing  the  violin  or  the 
piano. 

Love  cannot  be  foolish  ! 

Just  as  love  of  man  does  not  permit  one  to  read  novels 
to  a  hungry  man,  or  to  warm  up  a  freezing  person  by 
putting  on  him  earrings  and  bracelets,  even  so  love  of 
man  does  not  permit  the  ministration  to  them  to  consist 
in  cheering  the  satiated,  abandoning  the  hungry  and  the 
freezing  to  fate. 

Love  that  is  true,  not  in  words  but  in  deeds,  cannot  be 
foolish ;  it  is  only  love  which  gives  penetration  and 
wisdom,  and  so  a  man  who  is  permeated  by  love  will 
make  no  mistake  and  will  always  do  that  first  which  his 
love  of  men  demands,  —  what  supports  the  life  of  the 
hungry,  the  naked,  the  oppressed ;  and  what  supports 
the  life  of  the  hungry,  the  freezing,  and  the  oppressed  is 
the  struggle,  the  direct  struggle  with  Nature. 

Only  he  who  wants  to  deceive  himself  and  others  can, 


BONDAREV'S    TEACHING  409 

in  moments  of  danger  and  of  men's  struggle  with  want, 
evade  bringing  aid,  increase  men's  want,  and  assure  him- 
self and  those  who  are  perishing  in  his  sight  that  he  is 
busy  finding  or  inventing  means  for  their  salvation. 

Not  one  sincere  man,  who  puts  his  life  into  the  minis- 
tration to  others,  will  say  this.  And  if  he  says  it,  he  will 
never  find  in  Ms  conscience  a  confirmation  of  his  decep- 
tion ;  he  will  find  it  only  in  the  tricky  devihsh  teaching 
about  the  division  of  labour.  But  in  all  the  expressions 
of  human  wisdom,  from  Confucius  to  Mohammed,  he  will 
find  one  thing  only ;  he  wiU  find  it  with  particular  force 
in  the  Gospel ;  he  will  find  the  demand  for  serving  men 
not  according  to  the  theory  of  the  division  of  labour,  but 
in  the  simplest,  most  natural,  and  only  necessary  means ; 
he  will  find  the  demand  for  serving  the  sick,  the  impris- 
oned, the  hungry,  and  the  freezing.  But  it  is  impossible 
to  offer  aid  to  the  sick,  the  imprisoned,  the  hungry,  and 
the  freezing  in  any  other  way  than  by  means  of  one's  im- 
mediate, present  labour,  because  the  sick,  the  hungry,  and 
the  freezing  do  not  wait,  but  die  of  hunger  and  of  cold. 

To  a  man  who  professes  the  teaching  of  the  truth,  his 
life  itself,  which  consists  in  serving  others,  will  point  out 
that  original  law  which  is  expressed  in  the  first  book  of 
Genesis,  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread, 
which  Bondar^v  calls  the  original  law  and  proves  to  be 
positive. 

This  law  is  indeed  such  for  men  who  do  not  acknowl- 
edge the  meaning  of  life  which  is  revealed  to  men  by 
Christ,  and  such  it  was  for  men  before  Christ,  and  such 
it  will  remain  for  men  who  do  not  acknowledge  Christ's 
teaching.  It  demands  that  each  should  live  on  his  labour 
according  to  the  will  of  God,  as  expressed  in  the  Bible 
and  in  reason.  This  law  is  positive.  Such  is  this  law 
until  the  meaning  of  Hfe  has  been  revealed  to  men  in  the 
teaching  of  the  truth. 

But  with  the  higher  consciousness  of  the  meaning  of 


410  BONDAREV'S    TEACniNG 

life,  revealed  by  Christ,  the  law  of  bread  labour,  remain- 
ing as  true  as  ever,  becomes  only  a  part  of  the  one  positive 
teaching  of  Christ  about  serving  men,  and  receives  the 
significance,  not  of  a  positive,  but  of  a  negative  law.  This 
law,  with  a  Christian  consciousness,  points  only  to  an  old 
temptation  of  men,  to  what  men  must  not  do  in  order 
that  they  may  not  deviate  from  the  path  of  true  life. 

¥oT  a  believer  in  the  Old  Testament,  who  does  not 
acknowledge  the  teaching,  this  law  has  the  following 
meaning  :  "  Earn  your  bread  with  your  own  hands."  But 
for  a  Christian  it  has  a  negative  significance.  This  law 
says :  "  Do  not  assume  it  as  possible  to  serve  people  by 
swallowing  up  the  labours  of  others  and  by  not  earning 
your  own  sustenance  by  your  hands." 

This  law  is  for  a  Christian  an  indication  of  one  of  the 
most  ancient  offences  from  which  people  sufi'er.  Against 
this  offence,  terrible  in  its  consequences  and  so  old  that 
we  can  with  difficulty  recognize  it  as  a  deception,  and 
not  as  a  natural  human  property,  this  teaching  of  Bonda- 
r^v  is  directed  :  it  is  equally  binding  on  him  who  beheves 
in  the  Old  Testament,  and  on  the  Christian  who  believes  in 
the  Holy  Scripture,  and  on  him  who  does  not  beheve  in  the 
Scripture,  but  follows  reason  alone,  and  on  him  who  recog- 
nizes the  teaching  of  the  truth. 

Reader  and  dear  brother,  whoever  you  may  be,  I  love 
you,  and  not  only  do  not  wish  to  grieve  and  offend  you, 
to  bring  evil  into  your  life,  but  want  this  much,  —  to 
serve  you. 

I  could  write  a  great  deal,  and  I  feel  like  doing  so,  in 
order  to  prove  the  truth  of  this  proposition  and  overthrow 
the  arguments  which  I  hear  against  it.  But  no  matter 
how  much  I  may  write,  how  well  I  may  write,  how  logi- 
cally right  I  may  be,  I  shall  not  convince  you,  if  you 
struggle  with  your  reason  against  mine,  and  your  heart 
will  remain  cold. 

I  am  afraid  of  that ;  I  am  afraid  of  harming  you  with 


BONDAREV'S    TEACHING  411 

the  pride  of  my  reason,  with  my  coldness.  All  I  ask  you 
is  not  to  dispute,  not  to  prove,  but  to  ask  your  heart. 

Whoever  you  may  be,  no  matter  how  talented  you  may 
be,  or  how  good,  or  in  what  condition  you  may  be,  can 
you  be  calm  at  your  tea,  your  dinner,  at  your  business  of 
state,  of  art,  of  learning,  of  medicine,  or  teaching,  when 
you  hear  or  see  at  your  porch  a  hungry,  freezing,  sick, 
weary  man  ?  No,  you  cannot !  But  they  are  always 
there,  if  not  at  the  porch,  they  are  ten  sazhens,  ten  versts 
away.     They  are  there,  and  you  know  it. 

You  cannot  be  calm,  you  cannot  have  joys  which  are 
not  poisoned  by  them.  In  order  that  you  may  not  see 
them  at  the  porch,  you  must  bar  them  from  you,  keep  them 
from  you  by  your  coldness,  or  go  somewhere  where  they 
are  not  to  be  found.  But  they  are  everywhere  !  And  even 
if  a  place  were  found  where  you  would  not  see  them,  you 
will  nowhere  get  away  from  the  consciousness  of  the 
truth.     What  is  to  be  done  ? 

You  know  yourself,  and  this  whole  book  tells  you 
what. 

Descend  to  the  bottom  (to  what  to  you  seems  to  be 
the  bottom,  but  what  is  the  top),  stand  by  the  side 
of  those  who  feed  the  hungry,  clothe  the  freezing, — 
fear  nothing,  —  it  will  not  be  worse,  but  better  in  every 
respect.  Stand  in  a  row  with  them,  with  unskilled  hands 
take  hold  of  the  first  work  which  feeds  the  hungry  and 
clothes  those  who  are  cold,  —  of  the  bread  labour,  of  the 
struggle  with  Nature,.  —  and  you  will  feel  for  the  first 
time  a  firm  soil  under  your  feet :  you  will  feel  that  you 
are  at  home ;  that  you  are  free  and  firmly  settled  ;  that 
you  have  nowhere  else  to  go  to,  and  you  will  experience 
those  whole-hearted  unmixed  joys  which  you  will  find 
nowhere,  behind  no  doors  and  behind  no  curtains. 

You  will  learn  of  joys  which  you  did  not  know ;  you 
will  know  for  the  first  time  those  simple,  strong  men, 
your  brothers  who,  far  away  from  you,  have  so  far  fed  you, 


41!^  BOND  ARE  VS    TEACHING 

and,  to  your  surprise,  you  will  discover  iu  them  such  vir- 
tues as  you  did  not  know  before ;  you  will  see  in  them 
such  modesty,  such  goodness,  namely  toward  you,  wliich, 
you  will  feel,  you  do  not  deserve. 

Instead  of  contempt  and  ridicule,  which  you  expected, 
you  will  see  such  kiudness,  such  gratitude,  such  respect 
for  you,  because,  having  lived  all  your  life  by  their  labours, 
and  despising  them,  you  have  suddenly  come  to  your 
senses  and  are  willing  to  help  them  with  your  unskilful 
hands. 

You  will  see  that  what  to  you  appeared  as  a  little 
island,  on  which  you  have  been  sitting,  to  save  yourself 
from  the  sea  which  was  swamping  you,  is  a  bog  in  which 
you  have  been  sinking ;  and  that  the  sea  of  which  you 
have  been  afraid  is  firm  ground  over  which  you  will  pass 
safely,  calmly,  joyfully,  and  it  cannot  be  otherwise,  for 
from  the  deception  which  you  did  not  enter  yourself,  but 
were  led  into,  you  will  make  your  way  out  to  truth,  and 
from  the  departure  from  the  will  of  God  yoa  will  pass 
over  to  its  fulfilment. 


LETTER    TO    A    FRENCHMAN 

1889 


LETTER    TO    A    FRENCHMAN 


You  ask  me  why  manual  labour  presents  itself  to  us 
as  one  of  the  inevitable  conditions  of  true  happiness  ? 

Is  it  necessary  to  deprive  ourselves  of  mental  activity 
in  the  sphere  of  science  and  art,  which  to  us  seems  in- 
compatible with  manual  labour  ? 

To  these  questions  I  have  answered  as  well  as  I  could 
in  my  book  entitled  JVliaf  Shall  We  Bo  TJien  ? 

I  have  never  looked  upon  manual  labour  as  a  funda- 
mental principle,  but  as  a  most  simple  and  natural  appli- 
cation of  moral  principles,  an  appUcation  which  presents 
itself  first  of  all  to  every  sincere  man. 

In  our  corrupt  society  (the  society  which  is  called 
civilized)  we  have  to  speak  above  all  else  of  manual 
labour  only  because  the  chief  defect  up  to  the  present 
time  has  been  a  tendency  to  free  oneself  from  manual 
labour  and  to  make  use,  without  any  mutual  exchange, 
of  the  labour  of  the  ignorant  and  dispossessed  poor 
classes,  who  are  in  a  state  of  slavery  resembhng  the 
slavery  of  the  ancient  world. 

The  first  sign  of  the  sincerity  of  the  men  of  our  class, 
who  profess  Christian,  philosophical,  or  humanitarian 
principles,  is  a  striving  to  free  themselves  as  much  as 
possible  from  this  injustice. 

The  simplest  and  handiest  means  for  attaining  this  is 
manual  labour,  which  begins  by  attending  to  one's  own 
needs. 

415 


416  LETTER   TO   A   FRENCHMAN 

I  will  never  believe  in  the  sincerity  of  the  philosophical 
and  moral  principles  of  a  man  who  makes  his  chamber- 
maid carry  out  his  vessel. 

The  simplest  and  shortest  rule  of  morality  consists  in 
making  others  serve  one  as  little  as  possible,  and  in  serv- 
ing others  as  much  as  possible;  in  demanding  as  little 
as  possible  from  others,  and  giving  to  others  as  much  as 
possible. 

This  rule,  which  gives  to  our  existence  a  rational 
meaning,  and  the  good  as  its  consequence,  at  the  same 
time  solves  all  the  difficulties,  including  the  one  which 
presents  itself  to  you.  This  rule  points  out  the  place 
which  is  to  be  occupied  by  mental  activity,  by  science,  by 
art.  In  following  this  rule,  I  am  happy  and  satisfied  only 
when  iu  my  activity  I  am  unquestionably  sure  that  it  is 
useful  to  others.  The  gratification  of  those  for  whom  I 
act  is  already  a  surplus,  a  superabundance  of  happiness, 
on  which  I  cannot  count  and  which  cannot  influence  me 
in  the  choice  of  my  actions. 

My  firm  conviction  that  what  1  do  is  not  useless  and 
not  harmful,  but  good  for  others,  —  this  conviction  is  the 
chief  condition  of  my  happiness.  And  it  is  this  which 
makes  a  moral  and  sincere  man  involuntarily  prefer 
manual  labour  to  scientific  and  altruistic  work. 

In  order  that  my  labours  as  an  author  may  be  exploited, 
the  work  of  printers  is  needed  ;  to  carry  out  my  symphony 
I  need  the  work  of  musicians  ;  in  order  to  carry  out  ex- 
periments I  need  the  labours  of  those  who  make  appli- 
ances and  instruments  for  our  cabinets ;  for  the  picture 
which  I  am  painting  I  need  the  men  who  prepare  the 
paints  and  the  canvas,  —  but  at  the  same  time  the  works 
which  I  produce  may  be  useful  to  men,  or  they  may  be 
(as  in  the  majority  of  cases  they  are)  quite  useless  and 
even  harmful. 

How,  then,  can  I  busy  myself  with  occupations  the 
usefulness  of  which  is  very  doubtful,  and  for  which    I 


LETTER   TO    A    FRENCHMAN  417 

have  to  put  others  into  requisition,  while  about  me,  in 
front  of  me,  there  is  an  endless  quantity  of  things  which 
are  all  unquestionably  more  useful  for  others,  and  for  the 
production  of  which  I  need  nobody  ?  For  example,  to 
carry  a  burden  for  him  who  is  fatigued  from  it ;  to  plough 
up  the  field  of  a  sick  farmer ;  to  dress  a  wound,  and  so 
forth,  to  say  nothing  of  the  thousands  of  things  which 
surround  us,  for  the  production  of  which  no  external  aid 
is  needed,  which  give  immediate  satisfaction  to  those  for 
whom  they  are  produced ;  in  addition  to  these  there  is  a 
vast  number  of  acts  of  a  different  kind,  such  as,  planting 
a  tree,  raising  a  calf,  cleaning  a  well,  —  and  all  these  acts 
are  unquestionably  useful,  and  a  sincere  man  cannot  help 
preferring  them  to  occupations  which  demand  the  labour 
of  others  and  which,  at  the  same  time,  are  of  doubtful 
usefulness. 

The  calling  of  the  prophet  teacher  is  a  high  and  noble 
one.  But  we  know  what  the  priests  are  who  regard 
themselves  as  the  only  teachers,  because  they  possess  the 
possibility  of  compelling  others  to  regard  them  as  such. 
Not  he  is  a  prophet  who  receives  the  education  and  the 
culture  of  a  prophet,  but  he  who  has  the  inner  conviction 
that  he  is,  must  be,  and  cannot  help  but  be  that  and 
nothing  else. 

This  conviction  is  rarely  met  with,  and  can  be  proved 
only  by  the  sacrifices  which  a  man  brings  to  his  calling. 

The  same  holds  good  in  true  science  and  true  art. 
The  violinist  Lulli  runs  at  the  danger  of  his  life  from  the 
kitchen  to  the  garret,  in  order  to  play  on  his  violin,  and 
by  this  sacrifice  he  proves  the  sincerity  of  his  calling. 
But  for  a  student  of  the  conservatory,  a  university  stu- 
dent, whose  only  duty  consists  in  learning  what  is  being 
taught,  it  is  impossible  to  prove  the  truth  of  his  calling. 
They  only  make  use  of  the  condition  which  presents 
itself  to  them  as  advantageous. 

Manual  labour  is  a  duty  and  happiness  for  all  men; 


418  LETTER   TO    A    FRENCHMAN 

the  activity  of  the  mind  and  imagination  is  an  exclusive 
activity :  it  becomes  a  duty  and  happiness  for  those  only 
who  are  called  to  it.  A  calliug  may  be  discovered  and 
proved  only  by  a  sacrifice,  which  the  scholar  or  the  artist 
makes  of  his  rest  and  comfort,  in  order  to  devote  himself 
to  his  calling.  A  man  who  continues  to  fulfil  his  obliga- 
tions of  sustaining  his  hfe  by  the  work  of  his  hands,  and 
who,  in  spite  of  this,  deprives  himself  of  hours  of  rest  and 
sleep,  in  order  to  create  in  the  sphere  of  the  mind  and  the 
imagination,  thus  proves  his  calling  and  creates  in  his 
sphere  what  is  necessary  for  men.  But  he  who  rids  him- 
self of  universal  moral  obligations  and  under  the  pretext 
of  a  special  infatuation  for  art  or  for  science,  arranges  for 
himself  the  life  of  a  drone,  creates  only  false  science  and 
false  art. 

The  fruits  of  true  science  and  true  art  are  the  fruits  of 
sacrifice,  and  not  the  fruits  of  certain  material  prerogatives. 

But  what  will  then  become  of  art  and  of  science  ? 

How  often  I  hear  this  question  from  people  who  are 
not  at  all  interested  in  science  or  in  art,  and  who  have  not 
the  slightest  conception  of  what  science  and  art  are !  One 
would  think  that  these  people  have  near  at  heart  the  good 
of  humanity,  and  that  it,  according  to  their  conviction, 
cannot  be  obtained  in  any  other  way  than  by  the  evolu- 
tion of  what  they  call  science  and  art. 

But  what  a  strange  phenomenon  this  is,  that  men 
defend  the  usefulness  of  what  is  useful ! 

Is  it  possible  there  can  be  men  so  senseless  as  to  deny 
tlie  usefulness  of  what  is  useful  ?  And  is  it  possible 
there  are  still  more  ridiculous  people  who  regard  it 
as  their  duty  to  defend  the  usefulness  of  what  is  useful  ? 

There  are  artisans,  and  there  are  farmers,  and  no  one 
has  ever  had  the  courage  to  deny  their  usefulness ;  and 
never  will  a  labourer  stop  to  prove  the  usefulness  of  his 
labour.  He  produces,  and  his  product  is  indispensable 
and  good  for  others.     People  make  use  of  it,  and  no  one 


LETTER   TO    A   FRENCHMAN  419 

doubts  its  usefulness ;  and  still  less  does  one  stop  to 
prove  it.  The  workmen  of  art  and  of  science  are  in  the 
same  situation.  Why,  then,  are  there  found  people  who 
make  an  effort  to  prove  their  usefulness  ? 

The  reason  is  this,  that  the  true  workers  of  science  and 
of  art  do  not  secure  any  rights  to  themselves :  they  give 
the  products  of  their  labours,  these  products  are  useful, 
and  they  are  in  no  need  of  rights  and  of  their  confirma- 
tion. But  the  vast  majority  of  those  who  consider  them- 
selves savants  and  artists  know  full  well  that  what  they 
produce  is  not  worth  what  they  use  up,  and  so  they  have 
recourse  to  all  kinds  of  means,  hke  the  priests  of  all  times 
and  of  all  nations,  in  order  to  prove  that  their  activity  is 
indispensable  for  the  good  of  humanity. 

True  science  and  true  art  have  always  existed,  and  will 
always  exist,  hke  all  other  branches  of  human  activities, 
and  it  is  impossible  and  useless  to  deny  or  defend  them. 

The  false  position  which  science  and  art  occupy  in  our 
society  proves  only  that  the  people  who  call  themselves 
civilized,  with  the  savants  and  the  artists  at  their  head, 
form  a  caste  with  all  the  prophets  who  are  inherent  in 
each  caste.  They  debase  and  minimize  the  principle 
in  the  name  of  which  a  caste  is  formed.  Instead  of  the 
true  religion  they  preach  a  false  one ;  instead  of  the  true 
science  they  produce  a  false  one.  The  same  is  true  of 
art.  They  he  as  a  heavy  burden  on  the  people,  and  be- 
sides deprive  the  people  of  the  hght,  in  vain  trying 
to  show  that  they  are  disseminating  it.  And,  what  is 
worst  of  all,  their  acts  always  contradict  the  principles 
which  they  profess. 

Without  considering  those  who  maintain  the  untenable 
principle  of  science  for  science's  sake,  and  of  art  for  art's 
sake,  they  are  all  obliged  to  prove  that  science  and  art 
are  indispensable,  because  they  serve  the  good  of  human- 
ity. 

But  wherein  does  this  good  consist  ? 


420  LETTER   TO   A   FRENCHMAN" 

By  what  signs  can  the  good  be  told  from  the  evil  ? 

The  adherents  of  science  and  of  art  obviate  this  ques- 
tion. They  even  assume  that  the  determination  of  the 
good  is  not  possible  and  is  standing  outside  of  science 
and  outside  of  art.  The  good  in  general,  they  say,  what 
is  good  and  beautiful,  caunot  be  defined. 

But  they  are  lying  ! 

At  all  times,  humanity,  in  its  forward  movement,  has 
been  doing  nothing  but  defining  what  is  good  and  beauti- 
ful. Goodness  and  beauty  were  defined  a  thousand  years 
ago ;  but  this  definition  does  not  suit  them,  the  high 
priests :  it  discloses  their  emptiness  and  the  harmfulness 
of  what  they  call  science  and  art,  which  is  even  contrary 
to  goodness  and  beauty. 

The  Brahmins,  the  Buddhists,  the  Chinese  sages,  the 
Jews,  the  Egyptians,  the  Greek  stoics,  have  defined  the 
good  in  the  simplest  way.  Everything  which  introduces 
union  among  men  is  goodness  and  beauty.  Everything 
which  disunites  them  is  evil  and  ugliness.  All  men 
know  this  definition.     It  is  imprinted  in  our  hearts. 

Goodness  and  beauty  are  for  man  that  which  unites 
men.  And  so,  if  the  adherents  of  science  and  of  art  have 
indeed  the  good  of  humanity  in  view,  they  must  move 
forward  only  those  sciences  which  lead  to  that  end.  And 
if  that  were  so,  there  would  be  no  juridical,  no  military 
sciences,  no  poKtical  economy,  the  aim  of  which  is  the 
good  of  certain  societies  and  the  ruin  of  others.  If  the 
good  were  actually  the  aim  of  science  and  of  the  arts, 
the  pretensions  of  the  positive  sciences,  which  frequently 
have  no  relation  to  the  true  good  of  humanity,  would 
never  have  acquired  such  an  inexplicable  importance  ;  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  productions  of  art,  which  are 
only  good  for  the  excitation  of  corrupt  old  men  and  for 
the  pastime  of  idle  people. 

Human  wisdom  does  not  at  all  consist  in  the  quantity 
of  knowledge  which  we  may  acquire.     Wisdom  does  not 


LETTER   TO   A    FRENCHMAN  421 

consist  in  knowing  as  much  as  possible  ;  it  consists  in  the 
knowledge  of  that  order  in  which  it  is  useful  to  know 
things ;  wisdom  consists  in  the  knowledge  of  what  branch 
of  knowledge  is  more  or  less  important.  But  of  all  the 
branches  of  knowledge  the  most  necessary  to  man  is  that 
of  how  to  live,  doing  the  least  possible  amount  of  evil 
and  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  good ;  and  of  all  the 
arts  the  most  important  is  the  one  which  teaches  us  to 
avoid  evil  and  to  introduce  the  good  with  the  least 
effort. 

And  it  has  happened  that  among  all  the  sciences  and 
arts,  which  pretend  to  serve  humanity,  the  first  science 
and  the  first  art  in  importance  not  only  do  not  exist  in 
fact,  but  are  even  excluded  from  the  list  of  the  sciences 
and  the  arts. 

What  in  our  society  is  called  science  and  art  is  nothing 
but  an  immense  soap-bubble,  a  superstition,  into  which 
we  generally  fall  as  soon  as  we  free  ourselves  from  the 
superstition  of  the  church. 

In  order  clearly  to  see  the  road  over  which  we  have 
to  travel,  we  must  raise  the  hood  which  keeps  our  head 
warm,  but  interferes  with  our  seeing  the  road  ahead  of  us. 
The  offence  is  great. 

If  we  are  not  placed  in  that  situation  by  our  birth,  we 
by  our  labour  or  cunning  reach  out  for  the  upper  rounds 
of  the  social  ladder,  for  the  privileged  social  position  of 
the  priests  of  civilization,  and  like  the  priests,  Brahmins 
or  Catholics,  we  need  a  great  deal  of  sincerity  and  a  great 
deal  of  love  of  truth  and  of  goodness,  in  order  to  sub- 
ject to  doubt  those  principles  which  condition  such  an 
advantageous  position. 

But  for  a  serious  man,  who,  like  you,  puts  to  himself 
the  question  of  life,  there  is  no  choice :  in  order  that  he 
may  be  able  to  see  clearly,  he  must  free  himself  from 
prejudice,  although  the  prejudice  may  be  advantageous 
for  him. 


422  LETTER    TO    A   FRENCHMAN 

This  is  a  condition  sine  qua  non. 

It  is  useless  to  speak  with  a  man  who  accepts  anything 
whatever  on  faith.  If  the  field  of  thought  is  not  com- 
pletely free,  a  man  may  dispute  and  reflect  for  a  long  time 
and  yet  not  advance  an  iota  in  the  knowledge  of  truth. 
Every  rational  judgment  will  be  shattered  against  the  pre- 
conceived tenets  which  are  based  on  faith  alone. 

There  is  a  religious  faith  and  a  faith  in  the  progress  of 
humanity.  They  are  precisely  alike.  A  Catholic  says  to 
himself :  "  I  may  reflect,  but  only  within  the  limits  of 
Holy  Writ  and  Tradition,  which  possess  the  truth  in  all 
its  fulness  and  unchangeability." 

The  believer  in  civilization  says :  "  My  reflection  stops 
before  the  two  foundations  of  civilization,  science  and 
art." 

"  Our  science,"  he  says,  "  is  the  totality  of  the  true 
knowledge  of  man;  if  science  does  not  yet  possess  the 
full  truth,  it  will  possess  it  in  the  future.  Our  art,  to- 
gether with  the  classical  art,  is  the  one  true  art." 

The  religious  superstitions  say  :  "  Outside  of  man  exists 
the  thing  in  itself,  as  the  Germans  say,  and  that  is  the 
church." 

The  people  of  our  society  say :  "  Outside  of  man  exists 
civilization  in  itself." 

We  can  easily  see  the  illogicalness  in  the  religious 
superstitions,  because  we  do  not  share  them.  But  the 
religious  believer,  for  example  a  Catholic,  is  fully  con- 
vinced that  there  is  no  other  truth  but  his.  And  it 
seems  to  him  that  the  source  of  his  truth  is  proved  by 
disputation. 

Similarly,  when  we  are  ourselves  enmeshed  in  the  false 
belief  in  our  civilization,  we  are  almost  unable  to  see  the 
illogicalness  of  our  reflections,  which  are  all  directed 
toward  the  proof  that  of  all  times  and  nations  there  is 
only  our  time,  only  a  few  millions  of  people,  inhabiting  a 
peninsula  called  Europe,  who  are  in  possession  of  the  true 


LETTER  TO   A   FRENCHMAN  423 

civilization,  which  consists  in  the  true  science  and  the 
true  art. 

In  order  to  know  the  true  meaning  of  life,  which  is  so 
simple,  there  is  no  need  of  positive  philosophy,  nor  of  pro- 
found knowledge ;  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  have  no 
prejudices. 

We  must  arrive  at  the  condition  of  a  child  or  of  Des- 
cartes, and  we  must  say  to  ourselves :  "  I  know  nothing, 
believe  nothing,  and  want  nothing  but  to  find  out  the 
true  meaning  of  life,  which  I  must  live." 

The  answer  has  been  given  since  remote  antiquity,  and 
this  answer  is  clear  and  simple. 

My  inner  feeling  tells  me  that  I  want  the  good  and 
happiness  for  myself  ouly. 

Eeason  tells  me :  "  All  men,  all  beings,  want  the  same." 

All  beings,  which,  like  me,  seek  their  personal  happi- 
ness, will  evidently  crush  me.  And  so  I  cannot  find  that 
happiness  in  the  striving  after  which  my  life  consists. 
The  striving  after  happiness  is  my  Hfe,  and  reason  shows 
me  that  this  striving  is  useless,  and  that,  therefore,  I 
cannot  live. 

Simple  reflection  shows  me  that  in  that  order  of  the 
world,  where  all  beings  strive  only  after  their  personal 
good,  I,  a  being  striving  after  the  same,  cannot  get  this 
good.     And  I  cannot  live  ! 

But,  in  spite  of  such  a  clear  reflection,  we  live  and  seek 
happiness  and  the  good.  We  say  to  ourselves :  "  I  could 
attain  the  good,  be  happy,  if  only  all  the  other  beings 
loved  me  more  than  themselves." 

This  is  impossible  !  But,  in  spite  of  it,  we  all  live,  and 
our  whole  activity,  all  our  stri\T.ngs  after  wealth,  family, 
glory,  power, — all  that  is  only  attempts  at  compelling 
other  people  to  love  me  better  than  they  love  themselves. 

Wealth,  gloiy,  power,  give  us  the  semblance  of  such  a 
state,  and  we  are  satisfied :  for  a  moment  we  forget  that 
these  are  all  illusions,  and  not  reahty. 


424  LETTER    TO    A    FRENCHMAIS' 

All  beings  love  themselves  better  than  us,  and  happi- 
ness is  impossible  ! 

There  are  men  (and  their  number  is  growing  from  day 
to  day)  who  cannot  solve  this  difficvilty,  and  who  kill 
themselves,  saying  that  life  is  an  empty  and  foolish 
jest. 

And  yet  the  solution  of  the  problem  is  more  than 
simple,  and  presents  itself  of  its  own  accord. 

I  can  be  happy  only  in  an  order  of  the  world  in  which 
all  beings  would  love  others  more  than  themselves.  The 
whole  world  would  be  happy,  if  its  beings  did  not  love 
themselves,  but  their  like. 

I  am  a  being,  a  man,  and  reason  gives  me  the  law  of 
the  universal  good,  and  I  must  follow  this  law  of  my 
reason  —  I  must  love  others  better  than  myself. 

A  man  need  but  reflect  thus,  in  order  that  life  might 
suddenly  present  itself  to  him  under  an  entirely  different 
angle  of  vision  than  before. 

The  beings  destroy  one  another,  but  at  the  same  time 
love  and  help  one  another.  Life  is  not  supported  by  the 
passion  of  destruction,  but  by  the  passion  of  mutuality, 
which  in  the  language  of  our  heart  is  called  love. 

In  so  far  as  I  can  see  the  evolution  of  the  life  of  the 
world,  I  see  in  it  the  manifestation  of  nothing  but  this 
principle  of  mutual  help.  The  whole  of  history  is  noth- 
ing but  an  ever  clearer  and  clearer  manifestation  of  this 
one  principle  of  nnitual  concord  of  all  beings. 

The  reflection  is  also  confirmed  by  historical  and  by 
personal  experience,  but,  independently  of  the  reflection, 
man  finds  the  most  convincing  proof  of  the  justice  of  this 
reflection  in  his  inner  immediate  feeling. 

The  highest  good  known  to  man,  the  condition  of  the 
fullest  freedom  and  happiness,  is  a  condition  of  renuncia- 
tion and  love.  Reason  discloses  to  man  the  one  possible 
path  to  happiness,  and  feeling  directs  man  along  this  path. 

If  the  ideas  which  I  have  tried  to  communicate  to  you 


LETTER    TO    A    FRENCHMAN  425 

seem  obscure  to  you,  do  not  judge  them  too  severely.  1 
hope  that  some  day  you  will  read  them  in  a  clearer  and 
simpler  exposition. 

I  only  wanted  to  give  an  idea  of  my  views  of  life. 


THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHT^ 
ENMENT  OF  THE  12TH 
OF  JANUARY 

1889 


THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHT- 
ENMENT OF  THE  12TH 
OF    JANUARY 


What  can  there  be  more  terrible  than  village  holidays  ? 
In  nothing  is  so  palpably  expressed  all  the  savagery  and 
monstrosity  of  the  national  life  as  in  the  village  holidays. 
During  work-days  the  people  live,  eating  wholesome  food 
moderately,  working  industriously,  communing  with  one 
another  amicably.  Thus  it  goes  for  a  week,  sometimes 
for  months,  and  suddenly  tliis  good  hfe  is  impaired  with- 
out any  visible  cause.  On  one  definite  day  all  stop  work- 
ing at  the  same  time,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  day  begin 
to  eat  unaccustomed  dainties,  and  to  drink  the  specially 
prepared  wine  and  vodka.  All  drink :  the  old  make  the 
young,  and  even  children,  indulge  in  drink.  All  congrat- 
ulate one  another,  kiss,  embrace,  shout,  sing  songs ;  now 
they  are  meek,  now  they  brag,  now  feel  offended ;  all  talk, 
and  no  one  listens ;  one  hears  cries,  quarrels,  and  often 
sees  fights.  Toward  evening  some  stumble,  fall,  and  go 
to  sleep  wherever  they  happen  to  be ;  others  are  taken 
away  by  those  who  are  still  in  their  senses,  and  others 
again  wallow  on  the  ground  and  writhe,  filling  the  air 
with  the  stench  of  alcohol. 

On  the  next  day  all  these  men  awaken  sick  and,  com- 
ing to  a  little,  go  to  work  until  the  next  similar  day. 

429 


430    THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

What  is  it  ?  Why  is  it  so  ?  —  Why,  it  is  a  hoHday,  a 
church  holiday.  In  one  place  it  is  Visitation,  in  another, 
Presentation,  in  a  third,  the  Virgin  of  Kazan.  What 
is  meant  by  Visitation  and  Virgin  of  Kazan,  nobody  knows. 
All  they  know  is  that  it  is  a  church  holiday,  and  that  it  is 
necessary  to  celebrate.  And  they  wait  for  this  celebration, 
and  after  their  hard  life  of  labour  are  glad  when  that  time 
comes. 

Yes,  this  is  one  of  the  most  striking  expressions  of  the 
savagery  of  the  working  people.  Wine  and  celebration 
are  for  them  temptations  which  they  cannot  withstand. 
When  a  holiday  comes,  each  one  of  them  is  prepared  to 
get  intoxicated  to  a  point  where  he  loses  his  human  sem- 
blance. 

Yes,  the  masses  are  savage.  But  here  comes  the  12th 
of  January,  and  in  the  newspapers  the  following  announce- 
ment is  printed  :  "  A  social  dinner  of  the  alumni  of  the 
Imperial  Moscow  University  will  take  place  on  founder's 
day,  January  12th,  at  five  o'clock,  in  the  restaurant  of 
Grand  Hotel,  Moscow,  entrance  through  the  main  door. 
Tickets  for  the  dinner  at  six  roubles  may  be  had  .  .  ." 
(Follows  a  list  of  places  where  tickets  may  be  obtained.) 

But  this  is  not  the  only  dinner ;  there  will  be  dozens 
of  such  dinners,  —  in  Moscow,  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  in 
the  provinces.  The  12th  of  January  is  the  hohday  of  the 
oldest  Russian  university,  a  holiday  of  Ptussian  enlighten- 
ment. The  flower  of  enhghtenment  is  celebrating  its 
holiday. 

One  would  think  that  men  who  stand  at  the  two 
extreme  ends  of  enlightenment,  the  wild  peasants  and 
the  most  cultured  of  Russian  men,  —  the  peasants  who 
celebrate  Presentation  or  the  Virgin  of  Kazan,  and  the 
cultured  people  who  celebrate  this  very  holiday  of  en- 
lightenment, —  ought  to  celebrate  their  holidays  in  quite 
different  manners.  But  it  turns  out  that  the  holiday  of 
the  most  cultured  of  people  in  no  way  differs  from  that 


THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     431 

of  the  most  savage  of  men,  except  in  external  forms. 
The  peasants  stick  to  Visitation  or  the  A^irgin  of  Kazan 
without  the  slightest  reference  to  the  meaning  of  the 
holiday,  in  order  to  eat  and  drink ;  the  cultured  use  as  a 
pretext  the  day  of  St.  Tatiana,  in  order  to  stuff  themselves 
with  food  and  drink,  without  the  slightest  reference  to 
St.  Tatiana.  The  peasants  eat  gelatine  and  noodles ;  the 
cultured  eat  sea  crabs,  different  kinds  of  cheese,  soups, 
fillets,  etc.  The  peasants  drink  vodka  and  beer ;  the  cul- 
tured drink  hquors  of  every  description,  —  wines,  vodkas, 
liqueurs,  —  dry,  and  strong,  and  weak,  and  bitter  and 
sweet,  and  white  and  red,  —  and  champagne.  The  cost  of 
each  peasant's  treat  is  from  twenty  kopeks  to  one  rouble ; 
the  treat  of  the  cultured  costs  from  six  to  twenty 
roubles  for  each.  The  peasants  talk  of  their  love  for 
their  gossips,  and  sing  Russian  songs ;  the  cultured  speak 
of  loving  their  Alma  Mater,  and  with  faltering  tongues 
sing  senseless  Latin  songs.  The  peasants  fall  into  the 
mud,  and  the  cultured  —  upon  velvet  divans.  The  peas- 
ants are  taken  and  dragged  home  by  their  wives  and  sons, 
and  the  cultured  —  by  scornful,  sober  lackeys. 

Indeed,  it  is  terrible !  Terrible,  because  people  who,  in 
their  opinion,  stand  on  the  highest  level  of  human  educa- 
tion, are  not  able  in  any  other  way  to  celebrate  the  holi- 
day of  enlightenment  except  by  eating,  drinking,  smoking, 
and  shouting  senselessly  for  several  hours  in  succession. 
What  is  terrible  is  this,  that  old  men,  the  guides  of  the 
young,  contribute  to  poisoning  them  by  means  of  alcohol, 
—  which  poisoning,  like  quicksilver  poisoning,  never  dis- 
appears entirely  and  leaves  traces  for  the  rest  of  the  life. 
(Hundreds  and  hundreds  of  young  men  liave,  encouraged 
by  their  teachers,  for  the  first  time  become  beastly  drunk 
upon  this  holiday  -of  enlightenment,  thus  ruining  and  cor- 
rupting themselves  for  .the  rest  of  their  lives.)  But  most 
terrible  is  this,  that  the  men  who  are  doing  all  this  have 
to  such  an  extent  befogged  themselves  in  their  conceit 


432     THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMEKT 

that  they  are  unable  to  distinguish  between  what  is  good 
and  what  bad,  between  what  is  moral  and  what  immoral. 
These  people  have  so  convinced  themselves  that  the  con- 
dition in  which  they  are  is  a  condition  of  culture  and 
enlightenment,  and  that  culture  and  enhghtenment  give 
them  the  right  to  pamper  to  all  their  weaknesses,  that 
they  are  unable  to  see  the  beam  in  their  own  eyes. 
These  people,  who  abandon  themselves  to  what  cannot 
be  called  otherwise  than  monstrous  drunkenness,  amidst 
this  debauch  admire  themselves  and  commiserate  the 
unenhghtened  masses. 

Every  mother  suffers,  —  I  shall  not  say  at  the  sight  of 
her  drunken  sou,  but  even  at  the  thought  of  such  a  possi- 
bility ;  every  master  avoids  a  drunken  labourer ;  every 
uncon-upted  man  is  ashamed  of  himself,  if  he  has  been 
drunk.  All  know  that  drunkenness  is  bad.  But  here 
cultured,  enlightened  men  are  drunk,  and  they  are  fully 
convinced  that  there  is  not  only  nothing  shameful  or  bad 
in  it,  but  that  it  is  very  charming,  and  with  pleasure  and 
laughter  narrate  episodes  from  their  past  drunken  bouts. 
Things  have  come  to  such  a  pass  that  the  most  abomi- 
nable orgy,  in  which  young  men  are  made  drunk  by  their 
elders,  —  an  orgy  which  is  annually  repeated  in  the  name 
of  education  and  enlightenment,  —  does  not  offend  any- 
body, and  does  not  keep  people,  during  their  drunkenness 
and  after  it,  from  admiring  their  exalted  sentiments  and 
thoughts,  and  boldly  judging  and  valuing  the  morality  of 
other  people,  and  especially  of  the  coarse  and  ignorant 
masses. 

Every  peasant  regards  himself  as  guUty  when  he  is 
drunk,  and  begs  everybody  to  forgive  him  for  his  drunk- 
enness. In  spite  of  his  temporal  fall,  the  consciousness 
of  what  is  good  and  bad  is  alive  in  him.  In  our  society 
this  consciousness  is  being  lost. 

Very  well,  you  are  in  the  habit  of  doing  so  and  cannot 
refrain  from  it,  —  all  right,  continue  doing  so,  if  you  can- 


THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     433 

not  restrain  yourselves;  but  know  this  much,  that  on 
January  12th,  15th,  and  17th,  and  in  February,  and  in 
all  the  other  months,  this  is  disgraceful  and  low,  and, 
knowing  this,  abandon  yourselves  to  your  vicious  inclina- 
tions in  secret,  and  not  as  you  do  now,  —  triumphantly, 
entangling  and  corrupting  the  youth  and  your  so-called 
younger  brothers.  Do  not  confuse  the  youth  with  the 
doctrine  that  there  is  another,  a  civil  morality,  which 
does  not  consist  in  restraint,  and  another,  a  civil  immoral- 
ity, which  does  not  consist  in  lack  of  restraint.  All 
know,  and  you  know  it,  too,  that  before  all  other  civil 
virtues  one  needs  restraint  from  \dces,  and  that  every 
lack  of  restraint  is  bad,  and  that  especially  the  lack  of 
restraint  in  drinking  is '  exceedingly  dangerous,  because  it 
kills  conscience.  All  know  this,  and  so,  before  speaking 
of  any  exalted  sentiments  and  objects,  we  must  free  our- 
selves from  the  base  and  savage  vice  of  drunkenness,  and 
not  speak  of  exalted  subjects  while  we  are  drunk.  Do 
not  deceive  yourselves  and  other  men,  especially  do  not 
deceive  the  youths :  the  youths  feel  that,  taking  part  in 
the  savage  custom,  they  are  not  doing  the  right  thing, 
and  lose  something  very  precious  and  irretrievable. 

And  you  know  this,  —  you  know  that  there  is  nothing 
better  and  more  important  than  physical  and  spiritual 
purity,  which  is  lost  in  drunkenness ;  you  know  that  aU 
your  rhetoric,  with  your  eternal  Alma  Mater,  does  not 
move  you,  even  when  you  are  half-drunk,  and  that  you 
have  nothing  to  give  to  the  youths  in  place  of  that  inno- 
cence and  purity  which  they  lose  when  taking  part  in 
your  monstrous  orgies.  Do  not  debauch  them,  nor  con- 
fuse them,  but  know  that  as  it  was  with  Noah,  as  it  is 
with  every  peasant,  so  it  has  been  and  will  be  with  each 
person :  it  is  disgraceful  not  only  to  get  so  drunk  as  to 
yell,  swing  people,  get  up  on  the  tables,  and  do  all  kinds 
of  foolish  things,  but  also,  without  any  need,  in  com- 
memoration   of    the   holiday    of    enlightenment»  to   eat 


434    THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

savoury  food,  and  become  iutoxicated  with  alcohol.  Do 
not  debauch  the  youths,  and  do  not  debauch  the  servants 
which  surround  you  by  your  own  example.  The  hun- 
dreds and  hundreds  of  people  who  serve  you,  who  bring 
to  you  wine  and  food,  and  take  you  to  your  homes,  are 
men,  hve  men,  for  whom  there  exist,  as  for  all  of  us,  the 
most  important  questions  of  life,  as  to  what  is  good  and 
what  bad.  Whose  example  are  they  to  follow  ?  It  is 
fortunate  that  all  these  lackeys,  drivers,  porters,  these 
Eussian  villagers,  do  not  regard  you  as  what  you  think 
yourselves  to  be,  and  as  what  you  would  like  others  to 
regard  you,  —  as  representatives  of  enlightenment.  If 
this  were  the  case,  they,  looking  upon  you,  would  be 
disappointed  in  all  enlightenment,  and  would  despise  it; 
but  even  now,  though  they  do  not  consider  you  to  be 
representatives  of  enlightenment,  they  none  the  less  see 
in  you  learned  gentlemen,  who  know  everything,  and 
who,  therefore,  can  and  must  be  emulated.  And  what  is 
it  that  they,  the  unfortunate,  learn  from  you  ?  It  is  a 
good  question  to  put  to  yourselves. 

What  is  more  powerful,  that  enhghtenment  which  is 
disseminated  among  the  masses  by  the  giving  of  public 
lectures,  and  by  museums,  or  that  savagery  which  is 
supported  and  disseminated  among  the  masses  by  the 
spectacle  of  such  holidays  as  that  of  the  12th  of  Jan- 
uary, which  is  celebrated  by  the  most  enhghtened  men 
of  Eussia  ?  I  think  that  if  all  lectures  and  museums 
came  to  a  stop,  and  if  at  the  same  time  all  such  celebra- 
tions and  dinners  were  given  up,  and  the  cooks,  chamber- 
maids, drivers,  and  janitors  communicated  to  one  another 
in  conversations  that  all  the  enlightened  people  whom 
they  serve  never  celebrate  the  holidays  by  gorging  them- 
selves with  food,  and  getting  drunk,  but  know  how  to 
make  merry  and  converse  witliout  wine,  the  enlighten- 
ment would  not  lose  anything  by  it.  It  is  time  to  under- 
stand that  the  enlightenment  is  disseminated,  not  only 


THE  HOLIDAY  OF  ENLIGHTENMKKT    435 

by  magic  lantern  and  other  pictures,  not  only  by  the  oral 
and  the  printed  word,  but  by  the  striking  example  of  the 
whole  life  of  people,  and  that  an  enhghtenment  which 
is  not  based  on  the  moral  life  has  never  been  and  never 
will  be  an  enlightenment,  but  only  an  eclipse  and  a 
corruption. 


POPULAR     LEGENDS 

1886 


POPULAR  LEGENDS 


HOW  THE  DEVIL  EEDEEMED  THE  CRUST  OF 

BEEAD 

A  POOR  peasant  went  out  to  plough,  without  having 
had  his  breakfast,  and  took  with  him  from  home  a  crust 
of  bread.  The  peasant  turned  over  the  plough  and  un- 
tied the  beam,  which  he  put  under  a  bush ;  here  he  also 
placed  his  crust  of  bread,  which  he  covered  with  his  caftan. 

The  horse  grew  tired,  and  the  peasant  was  hungry. 
The  peasant  stuck  fast  the  plough,  unhitched  the  horse 
and  let  it  go  to  graze,  and  himself  went  to  his  caftan,  to 
have  his  dinner.  He  raised  the  caftan,  but  the  crust  was 
not  there ;  he  searched  and  searched  for  it,  and  turned  his 
caftan  around  and  shook  it,  but  the  crust  was  gone.  The 
peasant  marvelled. 

"  This  is  remarkable, "  he  thought.  "  I  have  not  seen 
any  one,  and  yet  somebody  has  carried  off  the  crust  of 
bread." 

But  it  was  a  little  devil  who,  while  the  peasant  had 
been  ploughing,  had  carried  off  the  crust ;  he  sat  down 
behind  a  bush  to  hear  how  the  peasant  would  curse  and 
scold  him,  the  devil. 

The  peasant  looked  a  bit  dejected. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  shall  not  starve.  Evidently  the 
one  who  carried  it  off  needed  it.  May  he  eat  it  to  his 
health  !  " 

439 


440  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

And  the  peasant  went  to  the  well,  drank  some  water, 
rested  himself,  caught  the  horse,  hitched  it  up,  and  began 
once  more  to  plough. 

The  little  devil  felt  sad  because  he  had  not  led  the 
peasant  into  sin,  and  went  to  the  chief  devil  to  tell  him 
about  it. 

He  appeared  before  the  chief  devil  and  told  him  how 
he  had  carried  off  the  peasant's  crust,  and  how  the 
peasant,  instead  of  cursing,  had  told  him  to  eat  it  to 
his  health.     The  chief  devil  grew  angry. 

"  If  the  peasant  has  in  this  business  got  the  better  of 
you,"  he  said,  "  it  is  your  own  fault,  —  you  did  not  know 
any  better.  If  the  peasants,  and  the  women,  after  them, 
take  such  a  notion,  we  shall  have  a  hard  time  of  it. 
This  matter  cannot  be  left  in  such  a  shape.  Go,"  he  said, 
"  once  more  to  the  peasant,  and  earn  the  crust.  If  in 
three  years  you  do  not  get  the  better  of  the  peasant, 
I  will  bathe  you  in  holy  water." 

The  Httle  devil  was  frightened.  He  ran  down  upon 
the  earth,  and  began  to  think  how  he  might  redeem  his 
guilt.  He  thought  and  thought,  and  finally  thought  it 
out.  He  turned  into  a  good  man,  and  hired  himself  out 
as  a  labourer  to  the  peasant.  He  taught  the  peasant  in  a 
dry  year  to  sow  in  a  swamp.  The  peasant  listened 
to  his  hired  hand  and  sowed  the  grain  in  the  swamp. 
The  other  peasants  had  all  their  grain  burned  up  by  the 
sun,  but  the  poor  peasant's  corn  grew  thick,  tall,  and 
with  fuU  ears.  The  peasant  had  enough  to  eat  until 
the  next  crop,  and  much  corn  was  left.  In  the  sum- 
mer the  hired  hand  taught  the  peasant  to  sow  on  the 
uplands.  It  turned  out  to  be  a  rainy  summer.  The  corn 
of  the  other  peasants  fell  down  and  rotted  and  made  no 
ears,  but  this  peasant's  corn  on  the  uplands  was  heavy 
with  ears.  The  peasant  had  now  even  more  corn  left, 
and  he  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it. 

The  hired  hand  taught  the  peasant  to  mash  the  graia 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  441 

and  brew  liquor.  The  peasant  brewed  some  liquor,  aud 
began  to  drink  himself  and  to  give  it  to  others.  Tl)e 
little  devil  came  to  his  chief,  aud  began  to  boast  that  he 
had  earned  the  crust.  The  chief  devil  went  to  look  for 
himself. 

He  came  to  the  peasant,  and  saw  that  the  peasant  had 
invited  some  rich  men,  to  treat  them  to  hquor.  The 
hostess  was  carrying  the  liquor  around  to  the  guests.  As 
she  walked  around,  her  foot  caught  in  the  table,  and  she 
spilled  a  glass.  The  peasant  grew  angry,  and  scolded 
his  wife. 

"  Devil's  fool,"  he  said.  "  Is  this  slops  that  you,  with 
your  clumsy  hands,  spill  such  precious  liquor  on  the 
ground  ?  " 

The  little  devil  nudged  his  chief. 

"  Watch  him  ! "  he  said.  "  Now  he  will  regret  his 
crust." 

The  host  scolded  his  wife,  and  began  himself  to  carry 
the  liquor  around.  A  poor  peasant,  who  had  not  been 
invited,  came  back  from  his  work.  He  greeted  the  com- 
pany and  sat  down,  watching  the  people  drink  the  liquor ; 
as  he  was  tired  he  wanted  to  have  a  drink  himself.  He 
sat  and  sat,  and  swallowed  his  spittle,  —  but  the  host  did 
not  offer  him  any  ;  he  only  muttered  : 

"  Where  will  a  man  get  enough  liquor  for  the  whole 
lot  of  you  ?  " 

This,  too,  pleased  the  chief  devil ;  but  the  little  devil 
boasted : 

"  Wait,  it  will  be  worse  than  that." 

The  rich  peasants  had  a  glass,  and  so  had  the  host. 
They  began  to  flatter  one  another  and  to  praise  one 
another,  and  to  speak  oily,  deceptive  words.  The  chief 
devil  listened  to  that,  too,  and  was  glad  of  it. 

"  If  this  drink  will  make  them  so  foxy,  and  they  will 
deceive  one  another,"  he  said,  "  they  will  be  in  our 
hands." 


442  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

"  Wait,"  said  the  little  devil,  "  and  see  what  is  coming ; 
let  them  drink  another  glass.  Now  they  wag  their  tails 
to  one  another,  like  foxes,  and  want  to  deceive  one 
another,  but  look,  they  will  soon  be  hke  fierce  wolves." 

The  peasants  had  another  glass,  and  their  words  became 
louder  and  coarser.  Instead  of  oily  speeches,  they  began 
to  curse  and  to  get  angry  with  one  another,  and  they 
fell  to,  and  mauled  one  another's  noses.  The  host,  too, 
took  a  hand  in  the  fight.     And  he  was  also  beaten. 

The  chief  devil  saw  this,  too,  and  was  glad. 

"  This,"  he  said,  "  is  nice." 

But  the  little  devil  said : 

"  Wait,  it  will  be  better  yet !  Let  them  have  a  third 
glass.  Now  they  are  like  mad  wolves,  but  let  them  have 
a  third  glass,  and  they  will  become  like  swine." 

The  peasants  had  a  third  glass.  They  went  completely 
to  pieces.  They  muttered  and  yelled,  they  did  not  know 
themselves  what,  and  paid  no  attention  to  one  another. 
They  began  to  scatter,  some  going  away  by  themselves, 
and  some  by  twos  and  threes ;  they  all  fell  down  and 
wallowed  in  the  street.  The  host  went  out  to  see  them 
off,  and  he  fell  with  his  nose  in  the  gutter,  and  he  became 
all  soiled  and  lay  there  like  a  pig,  grunting. 

This  pleased  the  chief  devil  even  more. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  you  have  invented  a  fine  drink,  and 
you  have  earned  the  crust.  Tell  me  how  you  made  this 
drink.  It  cannot  be  otherwise  than  that  you  have  first 
let  into  it  some  fox  blood,  —  and  this  made  the  peasant 
as  sly  as  a  fox.  And  then  you  let  in  some  wolf  blood,  — 
and  this  made  him  as  fierce  as  a  wolf.  And  finally  you 
poured  in  some  pig  l)lood,  and  this  made  him  a  pig." 

"  No,"  said  the  little  devil,  "  that  was  not  the  way  I 
did.  All  I  did  was  to  let  him  have  more  corn  than  he 
needed.  That  beast  blood  has  always  lived  in  him,  but 
it  has  no  chance  so  long  as  he  gets  barely  enough 
corn.     At  that  time  he  was  not  sorry  even  for  the  last 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  443 

crust,  but  when  he  began  to  have  a  surplus  from  his  corn, 
he  began  to  think  of  how  he  might  have  his  fun  from  it. 
And  I  taught  him  the  fun  of  drinking  liquor.  And  when 
he  began  to  brew  God's  gift  into  liquor  for  his  fun,  there 
arose  in  him  his  fox,  wolf,  and  pig  blood.  Let  him  now 
drink  liquor,  and  he  will  always  be  a  beast." 

The  chief  praised  the  little  devil,  forgave  him  for  the 
crust  of  bread,  and  made  him  a  captain. 


THE   EEPENTANT   SINNER 

And  he  said  uuto  Jesus,  Lord,  remember  me  when  thou 
comest  into  thy  kingdom. 

And  Jesus  said  unto  him,  Verily  I  say  unto  thee,  To-day 
shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  paradise.     (Luke  xxiii.  42,  43.) 

There  was  a  man  who  had  lived  seventy  years  in 
the  world,  and  had  passed  all  his  life  in  sins.  And  he 
grew  sick,  and  did  not  repent.  And  when  his  time  came 
to  die,  he  wept  in  the  last  hour,  and  said : 

0  Lord  !  Forgive  me  as  Thou  forgavest  the  thief  on  the 
cross. 

No  sooner  had  he  said  this  than  his  soul  left  him. 

And  the  soul  of  the  sinner  loved  God,  and  believed  in 
His  goodness,  and  came  to  the  gate  of  heaven.  And  the 
sinner  knocked  at  the  door,  and  begged  to  be  let  in.  And 
he  heard  a  voice  behind  the  door : 

"What  man  is  this  that  is  knocking  at  the  door  of 
heaven  ?  And  what  deeds  has  this  man  done  in  his 
life  ? " 

And  the  voice  of  the  arraigner  answered,  and  counted 
out  all  the  sinful  deeds  of  this  man,  and  did  not  mention 
a  single  good  deed. 

And  a  voice  answered  behind  the  door : 

"  Sinners  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Go 
hence." 

And  the  man  said  : 

"  Lord,  I  hear  thy  voice,  but  do  not  see  thy  face,  and 
do  not  know  thy  name." 

444 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  445 

And  the  voice  answered : 

"  I  am  Peter  the  apostle." 

And  the  sinner  said  : 

"Have  pity  on  me,  Peter  the  apostle.  Eemember 
human  weakness  and  God's  love.  Wert  thou  not  Christ's 
disciple,  and  heardst  thou  not  His  teaching  from  His  very- 
lips,  and  sawest  thou  not  the  examples  of  His  life  ? 
Remember,  when  He  was  dejected  and  troubled  in  spirit, 
and  commanded  thee  three  times  not  to  sleep,  but  to 
pray,  thou  didst  sleep,  because  thy  eyes  were  heavy,  and 
three  times  He  found  thee  sleeping.  Even  so  it  is  with 
me.  And  remember  again,  how  thou  didst  promise  Him 
not  to  renounce  Him  until  His  death,  and  how  thou  didst 
deny  Him  three  times,  when  they  took  Him  before  Cai- 
aphas.  Even  so  it  is  with  me.  And  remember  again, 
how  the  cock  crew,  and  thou  didst  go  out  and  weep  bit- 
terly. Even  so  it  is  with  me.  Thou  canst  not  keep  me 
out." 

And  the  voice  behind  the  door  of  heaven  grew  silent. 

And  the  sinner  stood  awhile,  and  began  once  more  to 
knock  at  the  door,  and  to  beg  to  be  admitted  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. 

And  another  voice  was  heard  behind  the  door,  saying : 

"Who  is  this  man,  and  how  did  he  live  in  the 
world  ? " 

And  the  voice  of  the  arraigner  answered,  again  repeat- 
ing all  the  evil  deeds  of  the  sinner,  and  did  not  mention 
any  good  deeds  whatsoever. 

And  the  voice  behind  the  door  answered : 

"Go  hence,  for  such  sinners  cannot  live  with  us  in 
heaven." 

And  the  sinner  said : 

"  Lord,  I  hear  thy  voice,  but  do  not  see  thy  face,  and 
do  not  know  thy  name." 

And  the  voice  said  to  him : 

"  I  am  David,  the  king  and  prophet." 


446  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

But  the  sinner  did  not  despair.  He  did  not  go  away 
from  the  door  of  heaven,  but  said : 

"  Have  mercy  on  me,  King  David,  and  remember 
human  weakness  and  God's  love.  God  loved  thee  and 
exalted  thee  above  men.  Thou  hadst  everything,  a  king- 
dom, and  glory,  and  riches,  and  wives,  and  children,  but 
when  thou  sawest  from  thy  roof  the  wife  of  a  poor  man, 
sin  entered  thee,  and  thou  tookest  the  wife  of  Uriah,  and 
slewest  him  with  the  sword  of  the  Ammonites.  Thou,  a 
rich  man,  tookest  the  last  sheep  away  from  a  poor  man, 
and  then  didst  destroy  him.  Even  so  did  I.  Then  re- 
member how  thou  repentedst,  saying,  '  I  confess  my  guilt, 
and  am  contrite  on  account  of  my  sin.'  Even  so  did  I. 
Thou  canst  not  keep  me  out." 

And  the  voice  behind  the  door  grew  silent. 

And  having  tarried  awhile,  the  sinner  began  to  knock 
once  more  and  to  beg  to  be  let  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.     And  a  third  voice  was  heard,  saying : 

"  Who  is  this  man  ?  And  how  did  he  hve  in  the 
world  ? " 

And  the  voice  of  the  arraigner  answered,  for  the  third 
time  recounting  the  evil  deeds  of  the  man,  and  did  not 
mention  any  good  deeds. 

And  a  voice  behind  the  door  answered : 

"  Go  hence.  Sinners  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven." 

And  the  sinner  answered : 

"  I  hear  thy  voice,  but  do  not  see  thy  face,  and  do  not 
know  thy  name." 

And  the  voice  replied  : 

"  I  am  John  the  Divine,  the  beloved  disciple  of  Christ." 

And  the  sinner  rejoiced  and  said : 

"  Now  I  cannot  be  kept  out.  Peter  and  David  will  let 
me  in,  because  they  know  human  weakness  and  God's 
love ;  but  thou  wilt  let  me  in,  because  there  is  much  love 
in  thee.     Didst  thou,  John  the  Divine,  not  write  in  thy 


POPULAR    LEGENDS  447 

book  that  God  is  love,  and  that  he  who  does  not  love 
does  not  know  God?  Didst  thou  not  in  thy  old  age 
say  this  word  to  men :  '  Brethren,  love  one  another '  ? 
How,  then,  canst  thou  hate  me  and  drive  me  away  ? 
Either  thou  shalt  renounce  what  thou  didst  say,  or  thou 
shalt  love  me  and  let  me  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God." 
And  the  gates  of  heaven  opened,  and  John  embraced 
the  repentant  sinner,  and  let  him  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God. 


THE  KEENEL   OF  THE  SIZE   OF   A   HEN'S  EGG 

One  day  some  children  found  in  a  ravine  something 
that  looked  like  a  hen's  egg  with  a  parting  in  the  middle 
and  resembling  a  kernel.  A  traveller  saw  this  thing  in 
the  children's  hands,  and  he  bought  it  from  them  for 
a  nickel,  and  took  it  to  town,  and  sold  it  to  the  king  as  a 
rarity. 

The  king  called  the  wise  men  and  commanded  them  to 
find  out  what  the  thing  was,  whether  an  egg  or  a  kernel. 
The  wise  men  thought  and  thought,  but  could  give  no 
answer.  The  thing  was  lying  on  ihe  wmdow-sill,  and 
a  hen  flew  in  and  picked  at  it,  until  it  picked  a  hole  in 
it :  then  all  saw  that  it  was  a  kernel.  The  wise  men  went 
to  the  king  and  told  the  king  that  it  was  a  rye  kernel. 

The  king  was  surprised.  He  commanded  the  wise  men 
to  find  out  where  and  when  this  kernel  had  grown.  The 
wise  men  thought  and  thought,  and  hunted  through 
books,  and  could  not  find  out.  In  our  books  nothing  is 
written  about  it ;  it  was  necessary  to  ask  the  peasants 
whether  one  of  the  old  men  had  not  heard  when  and 
where  such  a  kernel  had  been  sowed. 

The  king  commanded  that  a  very  old  peasant  be 
brought  into  his  presence.  They  found  such  a  man,  and 
brought  him  to  the  king.  There  arrived  a  green-skinned, 
toothless  old  man,  and  he  barely  could  walk  with  his  two 
crutches. 

The  king  showed  him  the  kernel ;  but  the  old  man 
could  not  see  well.  He  half  looked  at  it,  and  half  felt  it 
with  his  hands. 

The  king  began  to  ask  him  :  "  Do  you  not  know,  grand- 

448 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  449 

father,  where  such  a  kernel  was  raised  ?  Have  you  not 
raised  such  grain  ?  Or  did  you  not  some  day  during  your 
hfe  buy  such  a  seed  ? " 

The  old  man  was  deaf,  and  he  barely  heard  what  the 
king  was  saying,  and  barely  made  it  out.  Then  the  old 
man  began  to  speak : 

"  No,  I  have  not  raised  such  grain  in  my  field,  and 
have  never  reaped  such,  nor  have  I  bought  such.  When- 
ever I  bought  grain,  it  was  always  small.  But  I  must 
ask  my  father,"  he  said,  "  perhaps  he  has  heard  of  such 
grain." 

The  king  sent  for  the  old  man's  father,  and  commanded 
that  he  be  brought  into  his  presence.  They  found  the 
old  man's  father,  and  brought  him  to  the  king.  The  old 
man  came  on  one  crutch.  The  king  showed  liim  the 
kernel.  The  old  man  could  see  -with  his  eyes.  He  took 
a  good  look  at  it.     The  king  began  to  ask  him : 

"  Do  you  not  know,  old  man,  where  such  a  kernel  was 
grown  ?  Have  you  never  raised  such  in  your  own  field  ? 
Or  have  you  ever  bought  such  kernels  in  your  life  ? " 

Though  the  old  man  was  rather  hard  of  hearing,  he 
heard  better  than  his  son. 

"  No,"  he  said,  "  I  have  never  sowed  such  seed  in  my 
field,  and  have  never  reaped  such.  Nor  have  I  ever 
bought  such,  as  in  my  day  money  was  not  yet  in  exist- 
ence. We  all  lived  on  our  own  grain,  and  in  case  of  need 
shared  with  our  neighbours.  I  do  not  know  where  such 
a  kernel  was  grown.  Though  our  grain  used  to  be  larger 
and  more  millable  than  what  it  is  now,  I  never  saw  such. 
I  used  to  hear  my  father  say  that  in  his  day  the  grain 
was  larger  and  more  millable  than  ours.  You  will  have 
to  ask  him." 

The  king  sent  for  his  father.  They  found  the  man,  and 
he  was  brought  to  the  king.  The  old  man  walked  into 
the  king's  room  without  any  crutches.  He  walked 
lightly,  —  his  eyes  were  bright,  and  he  could  hear  well. 


450  POPULAR   LEGENDS 

and  talked  distinctly.  The  king  showed  the  kernel  to 
the  old  man.  The  old  man  looked  at  it,  and  turned 
it  around. 

"  It  is  now  long  since  I  last  saw  such  grain." 

The  old  man  bit  off  a  piece  of  the  kernel,  and  chewed  it. 

"  It  is  that,"  he  said. 

"  Tell  me,  grandfather,  when  and  where  such  a  kernel 
was  raised  ?  Did  you  never  sow  such  in  your  own  field  ? 
Or  did  you  ever  buy  it  of  people  in  your  lifetime  ? " 

And  the  old  man  said : 

"  In  my  day  such  grain  was  raised  everywhere.  With 
such  corn  I  fed  myself  and  other  people.  Such  grain 
I  sowed,  and  reaped,  and  threshed." 

And  the  king  asked  : 

"  Tell  me,  grandfather,  did  you  buy  such  grain,  or  did 
you  sow  it  in  your  own  field  ? " 

The  old  man  smiled. 

"  In  my  day,"  he  said,  "  no  one  ever  thought  of  such 
a  sin  as  selling  or  buying  grain.  We  did  not  know  any- 
thing about  money.  Everybody  had  enough  corn  of  his 
own." 

And  the  king  asked  : 

"  Then  tell  me,  grandfather,  where  you  sowed  such 
corn,  and  where  your  field  was  ? " 

And  the  old  man  said : 

"  My  field  was  God's  earth.  Wherever  I  ploughed, 
there  was  the  field.  The  land  was  free.  They  did  not 
call  it  one's  own  land.  People  called  nothing  but  their 
labour  their  own." 

"  Tell  me,  then,"  said  the  king,  "  two  more  things :  one 
is,  why  formerly  you  used  to  grow  such  grain,  and  now 
such  grain  does  not  grow.  The  otlier  is,  why  your  grand- 
son walked  with  two  crutches,  while  your  son  came  with 
one,  and  you  walk  entirely  at  your  ease :  your  eyes  are 
bright,  your  teeth  strong,  and  your  speech  clear  and  pleas- 
ing.     Grandfather,  how  did  these  two  things  happen  ? " 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  451 

And  the  old  man  said  : 

"  These  things  are  so  because  people  have  stopped 
living  by  their  own  labour,  aud  are  having  an  eye  to 
other  people's  labour.  They  did  not  hve  that  way  of  old ; 
of  old  they  lived  in  godly  fashion,  —  they  owned  what 
■was  their  own,  and  did  not  profit  by  what  belonged  to 
others." 


HOW  MUCH  LAND  A  MAN  NEEDS 


The  elder  sister  came  with  her  younger  sister  to  the 
country.  The  elder  was  married  to  a  merchant  in 
the  city,  and  the  younger  to  a  peasant  in  the  vil- 
lage. The  sisters  were  drinking  tea,  and  talking.  The 
elder  began  to  boast,  —  to  praise  her  city  life,  —  telling 
how  comfortably  and  how  cleanly  they  lived  in  the  city, 
how  she  dressed  up  the  children,  what  savoury  food  and 
drink  she  had,  and  how  she  went  to  picnics  and  en- 
tertainments and  theatres. 

The  younger  sister  felt  offended,  and  began  to  speak 
disparagingly  of  the  merchant  life,  and  to  extol  the  life 
of  the  peasants. 

"  I  would  not  exchange  my  life  for  yours,"  she  said. 
"  It  is  true,  we  live  uncleanly,  but  we  do  not  know  what 
fear  is.  You  live  more  cleanly,  but  you  either  make 
a  lot  of  money,  or  you  lose  it  all.  And  the  proverb 
says,  '  Gain  loves  more.'  And  it  happens  that  to-day  you 
are  rich,  and  to-morrow  you  lie  in  the  gutter.  But  our 
peasant  business  is  surer;  a  peasant's  life  is  slim,  but 
long  ;  we  are  not  rich,  but  have  enough  to  eat." 

The  elder  sister  said  : 

"  Yes,  enough  to  eat,  but  with  pigs  and  calves !  You 
aren't  dressed  up,  and  have  no  manners.  No  matter  how 
much  your  man  may  work,  you  live  in  manure,  and  so 
you  wiU  die,  leaving  nothing  to  your  children." 

"  What  of  it  ?  "  said  the  younger.  "  Such  is  our  busi- 
ness.    But  we  are  independent,  and  do  not  bow  to  any 

452 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  453 

one,  and  fear  no  one.  But  you  live  in  the  cities  among 
temptations :  to-day  it  is  all  right,  and  to-morrow  the 
unclean  one  will  turn  up  and  tempt  your  man  either 
with  cards,  or  with  wine,  or  with  some  damsel.  And 
then  all  will  go  to  the  winds.  Do  not  such  things 
happen  ?  " 

Pakhom,  her  husband,  lying  on  the  oven,  heard  the 
women's  prattle. 

"  That  is  the  gospel  truth,"  he  said.  "  Our  kind  have 
been  turning  over  mother  earth  ever  since  our  childhood, 
and  so  foolishness  has  no  time  to  enter  into  our  heads. 
There  is  just  this  trouble,  —  we  have  not  enough  land  ! 
If  I  had  as  much  land  as  I  want,  I  would  not  be  afraid  of 
the  devil  himself." 

The  women  drank  their  tea,  prattled  awhile  about 
dresses,  put  away  the  dishes  and  went  to  sleep. 

But  the  devil  had  been  sitting  behind  the  oven,  and 
listening  to  all  they  said.  He  was  glad  to  hear  the 
peasaut  woman  make  her  husband  boast  that  if  he  had 
enough  land,  the  devil  would  not  take  him. 

"  Very  well,"  he  thought,  "  we  shall  have  a  tussle :  I 
will  give  you  lots  of  land.  I  will  overcome  you  by  means 
of  the  land." 

n. 

By  the  side  of  the  peasants  there  lived  a  small  pro- 
prietress. She  had  120  desyatinas  of  land.  So  far  she 
had  lived  in  peace  with  the  peasants,  and  had  offended  no 
one ;  but  an  ex-soldier  hired  out  to  her  as  a  steward,  and 
he  began  to  wear  the  peasants  out  with  fines.  No  matter 
how  careful  Pakhom  was,  either  his  horse  would  run  into 
the  oats,  or  a  cow  would  lose  her  way  in  the  garden,  or 
the  calves  would  stray  into  the  meadow,  —  for  everything 
he  had  to  pay  a  fine. 

Pakhom  paid  the  fines,  and  scolded  and  beat  his  home 
people.     And  so  Pakhom  suffered  many  an  insult  from 


454  POPULAK  LEGENDS 

r 

that  steward  during  the  summer,  aud  was  glad  when  they 
began  to  stable  the  cattle,  —  though  he  was  sorry 
they  could  not  graze,  he  at  least  had  no  more  fear. 

In  the  winter  the  rumour  was  spread  that  the  propriet- 
ress was  going  to  sell  her  land,  and  that  an  innkeeper  on 
the  highway  was  trying  to  buy  it.  When  the  peasants 
heard  this,  they  groaned. 

"  Well,"  they  thought,  "  if  the  innkeeper  gets  the  laud, 
he  will  wear  us  out  with  fines  even  worse  than  the  pro- 
prietress. We  cannot  live  without  this  land,  —  we  live 
all  around  it." 

The  peasants  went  to  the  proprietress  and  began  to  ask 
her  not  to  sell  it  to  the  innkeeper,  but  to  let  them  have  it. 
They  promised  they  would  pay  more  for  it.  The  lady 
consented.  The  peasants  were  thinking  of  buying  the 
land  in  common :  they  met  once  and  twice  to  discuss 
the  matter,  but  it  did  not  work.  The  evil  one  brought 
discord  among  them,  and  they  could  not  agree.  Finally 
the  peasants  agreed  to  buy  the  land  in  lots,  as  much  as 
each  could  afford  to  buy.  The  lady  agreed  even  to  this. 
Pakhdm  heard  that  a  neighbour  of  his  had  bought  twenty 
desyatinas,  and  that  she  had  given  him  time  for  half  the 
sum.  Pakhom  felt  jealous :  "  They  will  buy  up  all 
the  land,"  he  thought,  "  and  I  shall  be  left  with  nothing." 
He  began  to  take  counsel  with  his  wife. 

"  People  are  buying  the  land,"  he  said,  "  and  we,  too, 
ought  to  buy  a  few  desyatinas  of  it.  We  cannot  get 
along  now,  for  the  steward  has  ruined  me  with  the  fines." 

They  considered  how  they  might  buy  it.  They  had 
one  hundred  roubles  put  away,  and  they  sold  a  colt,  and 
half  of  the  bees,  and  hired  out  their  son  as  a  labourer, 
and  borrowed  some  from  a  relative,  and  thus  got  together 
half  the  sum. 

Pakhom  took  the  money,  picked  out  fifteen  desyatinas 
with  a  little  grove,  and  went  to  the  lady  to  strike  a  bar- 
gain.     He  bought  the  fifteen   desyatinas,   clinched  the 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  455 

bargain,  and  paid  an  earnest.  They  drove  to  the  city  and 
made  out  a  deed,  and  he  paid  half  the  sum  and  promised 
to  pay  the  rest  in  two  years. 

Thus  Pakhom  became  possessed  of  land.  He  borrowed 
seed  and  sowed  in  the  purchased  land,  and  it  produced  a 
good  crop.  In  one  year  he  paid  his  debt  to  the  lady  and 
to  his  relative.  And  so  Pakhom  became  a  proprietor :  he 
ploughed  and  sowed  in  his  own  land,  mowed  on  his 
own  land,  cut  poles  off  his  own  land,  and  pastured  his 
cattle  on  his  own  laud.  Pakhom  took  great  delight  in 
ploughing  the  land  which  belonged  to  him  for  all  time, 
and  in  going  out  to  look  at  the  sprouting  corn  and  at  the 
meadows.  It  seemed  to  him  as  though  the  grass  grew 
and  the  flowers  bloomed  quite  differently  on  them.  He 
had  crossed  this  land  many  a  time  before,  and  it  had  been 
just  land  to  him;  but  now  it  was  something  quite  dif- 
ferent. 

III. 

Thus  Pakhom  lived,  enjoying  himself.  All  would  have 
been  well,  but  the  peasants  began  to  trespass  on  Pakhom's 
fields  and  meadows.  He  begged  them  in  kindness,  but 
they  paid  no  attention  to  him :  now  the  shepherds  let  the 
cows  get  into  his  meadows,  and  now  the  horses  would  leave 
their  right  pastures  and  run  into  his  corn.  Pakhom  drove 
them  off,  and  forgave  the  peasants,  and  did  not  sue  them ; 
finally  he  got  tired  of  it,  and  began  to  complain  in  the 
township  office.  He  knew  that  the  peasants  were  not 
doing  it  from  malice,  but  because  they  were  crowded,, but 
he  thought :  "  I  cannot  let  them  off,  for  they  will  ruin  aU 
my  fields.     I  must  teach  them  a  lesson." 

He  taught  them  one  or  two  lessons  in  court,  and  this 
and  that  man  were  fined.  His  neighbours  began  to  have 
a  grudge  against  him,  and  occasionally  trespassed  on  his 
land  intentionally.  Some  one  stole  in  the  night  into 
his  grove  and  cut  down  ten  lindens  for  bast.     As  Pakhom 


456  POPUL.\K   LEGENDS 

passed  by  the  grove,  he  noticed  something  white  there. 
He  drove  up  to  the  spot,  and  found  the  barked  lindens 
on  the  ground,  and  the  stumps  standing.  "  If  he  had  just 
cut  off  the  outer  bushes  aud  left  the  main  tree  standing ! 
But  no,  the  rascal  has  cut  them  all  down."  Pakhom 
grew  angry. 

"  Oh,"  he  thought,  "  if  I  could  just  find  out  who  did  it ; 
I  would  get  my  revenge  on  him."  He  thought  and 
thought  who  it  could  be ;  "  It  cannot  be  any  one  but 
S^mka." 

He  went  into  S^mka's  yard  to  look  for  them,  but  found 
there  nothing,  aud  they  only  had  a  quarrel.  I'akhom 
became  even  more  convinced  that  it  was  S(^mka.  He 
entered  a  complaint.  They  were  summoned  to  court. 
They  tried  aud  tried  the  case,  and  discharged  the  peasant, 
for  there  was  no  evidence.  Pakhom  grew  angrier  than 
ever,  and  he  scolded  the  elder  aud  the  judges. 

"  You  are  in  with  the  thieves,"  he  said.  "  If  you  your- 
selves lived  honestly,  you  would  not  let  the  thieves  go 
free." 

Pakhom  quarrelled  with  the  judges  and  with  his  neigh- 
bours. They  began  to  threaten  to  set  fire  to  his  house. 
Pakhom  lived  more  comfortably  on  his  land,  but  less 
comfortably  in  the   Commune. 

Just  then  they  began  to  spread  a  rumour  that  people 
were  going  to  new  places.      Aud  Pakhom  thought : 

"  I  have  no  reason  for  leaving  my  own  land ;  but  if 
some  of  our  men  would  go  there,  there  would  be  more 
room  here.  I  would  take  up  their  land  and  would  attach 
it  to^my  own.  I  should  live  more  comfortably  than  I  do 
now,  for  now  I  am  crowded  ! " 

Pakhom  was  sitting  at  home  one  day,  when  a  transient 
peasant  stepped  in.  They  invited  the  peasant  to  stay 
overnight,  and  gave  him  to  eat,  and  talked  with  him, 
asking  him  whence  God  had  brought  hira.  The  peasant 
said  that  he  had  come  from  farther  down,  from  beyond 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  457 

the  Volga,  where  he  had  been  working.  One  word  led  to 
another,  and  he  told  them  how  people  were  rushing 
to  settle  down  there.  He  told  them  that  men  from  his 
village  had  settled  there,  joining  the  Commune,  and  re- 
ceiving ten  desyatinas  to  each  soul.  The  land  was  such, 
he  said,  that  they  planted  rye  which  grew  to  be  higher 
than  a  horse,  and  so  thick  that  about  five  handfuls  made 
a  sheaf.  There  was  one  peasant,  he  said,  who  had  been 
poor,  and  had  come  with  nothing  but  his  hands,  and  now 
had  six  horses  and  two  cows. 

This  excited  Pakhoui.     He  thought : 

"  Why  suffer  here  where  it  is  crowded,  if  it  is  possible 
to  live  better  ?  I  will  sell  the  laud  and  the  farm ;  there 
I  will  start  a  new  farm  with  this  money,  and  will  provide 
myself  with  everything.  Here,  where  it  is  crowded,  it  is 
just  a  shame  to  stay.  But  I  must  first  find  it  all  out 
myself." 

He  got  ready  in  the  summer,  aud  started  out.  Down 
to  Samara  he  went  on  a  steamer,  then  he  made  four  hun- 
dred versts  on  foot.  He  reached  the  place.  It  was  all 
as  he  had  been  told :  the  peasants  were  living  freely,  with 
ten  desyatinas  of  land  to  each  soul,  and  glad  to  receive 
people  into  their  Communes.  Aud  if  a  man  had  money, 
he  could,  in  addition  to  the  grant,  buy  in  perpetual  pos- 
session the  very  best  land  at  three  roubles  :  he  could  get 
all  the  land  he  wanted. 

Pakhom  found  out  everything  he  wanted.  He  returned 
home  in  the  fall,  aud  began  to  sell  everything.  He  sold 
his  land  at  a  profit,  and  his  farm,  and  all  his  cattle ;  he 
gave  up  his  membership  in  the  Commune,  and  waited  for 
spring,  and  went  with  his  whole  family  to  the  new  places. 


IV. 

Pakhom   arrived  with  his   family  in  the  new  places, 
where  he  joined  the  Commune  of  a  large  village.     He 


458  POPULAR   LEGENDS 

treated  the  old  men  and  got  all  the  papers  made  out. 
They  received  Pakhom,  and  apportioned  to  him  for  his 
five  souls  fifty  desyatinas  in  various  fields,  not  counting 
the  common  pasture. 

Pakhom  built  a  hut  and  bought  cattle.  He  had  now 
three  times  as  much  land  as  before,  and  it  was  fruitful 
land.  He  began  to  live  ten  times  as  well  as  before.  He 
had  all  the  fields  and  meadows  he  wanted.  He  could 
keep  as  many  cattle  as  he  pleased. 

At  first,  while  he  was  building  and  getting  things  into 
shape,  everything  looked  nice  to  Pakhom ;  but  when  he 
got  used  to  it,  he  began  once  more  to  feel  crowded.  The 
first  year  Pakhom  sowed  w^heat  on  the  grant  land,  and 
he  had  a  good  crop.  He  got  it  into  liis  head  to  sow 
wheat,  but  the  grant  land  was  not  enough  for  him,  and 
what  there  was  of  it  was  no  good.  There  they  were 
sowing  wheat  on  prairie  laud.  They  sowed  it  in  for  two 
years,  and  then  let  it  he  fallow,  to  grow  up  again  with 
prairie  grass.  There  were  many  who  wanted  to  have 
such  land,  so  that  there  was  not  enough  land  to  go 
around.  And  there  were  quarrels  about  it:  those  who 
were  better  off  wanted  to  sow  on  it  themselves,  and  the 
poor  people  gave  it  to  the  merchants  for  the  taxes.  Pak- 
hom wanted  to  sow  as  much  as  possible.  He  went  the 
next  year  to  a  merchant,  and  bought  land  for  the  period 
of  a  year.  He  went  the  next  year  to  the  merchant, 
and  again  bought  land  for  a  year.  He  sowed  more 
wheat,  and  he  had  a  good  crop,  only  it  was  far  away 
from  the  village,  —  he  had  to  haul  the  wheat  fifteen 
versts.  He  saw  the  merchant  peasants  of  the  district 
living  in  their  estates,  and  getting  rich. 

"  It  would  be  nice,"  thought  Pakhom,  "  if  I  myself 
bought  land  in  perpetuity,  and  estabhshed  an  estate  for 
myself.     Everything  would  be  adjoining  me." 

And  Pakhdm  began  to  think  how  he  might  buy  land 
in  perpetuity. 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  459 

•  Thus  Pakhom  lived  for  three  years.  He  rented  land, 
and  sowed  wheat.  The  years  were  good,  and  the  wheat 
grew  well,  and  he  had  some  money  laid  by.  He  could 
live  and  live,  but  it  appeared  tiresome  to  Pakhom  to  buy 
new  land  from  people  each  year,  and  to  have  to  fuss 
about  the  land:  where  there  was  any  good  land  the 
peasants  would  swoop  down  on  it  and  take  it  all  up, 
and  unless  he  was  quick  in  getting  it,  he  would  not  have 
any  land  to  sow  in.  And  in  the  third  year  he  rented 
with  a  merchant  a  pasture  on  shares,  and  they  ploughed 
it  all  up,  but  the  peasants  from  whom  they  rented  it 
went  to  court  about  it,  and  all  their  work  was  lost.  "  If 
it  were  all  my  land,"  he  thought,  "  I  should  not  bow  to 
any  one,  and  there  would  be  no  worry." 

Pakhom  began  to  inquire  where  he  could  buy  land  in 
perpetuity,  and  he  found  a  peasant  who  would  sell.  The 
peasant  had  bought  five  hundred  desyatinas,  but  he  had 
lost  money,  and  now  wanted  to  sell  the  land  cheap. 
Pakhom  began  to  bargain  with  him.  He  bargained  and 
bargained,  and  finally  got  it  for  fifteen  hundred  roubles, 
half  of  it  on  time.  They  had  almost  settled  the  matter, 
when  a  transient  merchant  stopped  at  his  farm  to  get 
something  to  eat.  They  drank  tea,  and  started  to  talk. 
The  merchant  told  him  that  he  had  come  from  the  far- 
off  country  of  the  Bashkirs.  There,  he  said,  he  had 
bought  about  five  thousand  desyatinas  from  the  Bashkirs, 
and  for  this  he  had  to  pay  only  one  thousand  roubles. 
Pakhom  began  to  question  him.  The  merchant  told  him 
all  about  it. 

"  All  I  had  to  do,"  he  said,  "  was  to  gain  over  the  old 
men.  I  gave  in  presents  about  one  hundred  roubles' 
worth  of  cloaks  and  rugs,  and  a  caddy  of  tea,  and  filled 
up  with  wine  those  who  would  drink.  I  gave  twenty 
kopeks  per  desyatina."  He  showed  the  deed.  "  The 
land,"  he  said,  "  lies  along  a  river,  and  it  is  all  a  prairie," 

Pakhom  began  to  question  him  all  about  it. 


460  POPULAR    LEGENDS 

"  You  can't  walk  around  the  land  in  a  year,"  he  said, 
"  and  it  all  belongs  to  the  Bashkirs.  And  the  people 
have  no  sense,  just  like  sheep.  You  can  get  it  almost 
for  nothing." 

"  Well,"  thought  Pakhom,  "  why  do  I  want  to  buy 
five  hundred  desyatiuas  for  one  thousand  roubles,  and 
take  a  debt  on  my  neck  ?  There  I  can  get  rich  for  one 
thousand  roubles." 

V. 

Pakhom  inquired  how  to  get  there,  and  as  soon  as  he 
saw  the  merchant  off  he  got  ready  to  go.  He  left  his 
house  to  his  wife,  and  took  his  hired  help,  and  went  with 
him.  They  travelled  to  the  city,  bouglit  a  caddy  of  tea, 
presents,  and  wine,  just  as  the  merchant  had  said.  They 
travelled  and  travelled,  until  they  had  five  hundred  versts 
behind  them.  On  the  seventh  day  they  came  to  the 
Bashkir  roaming-grounds.  Everything  was  as  the  mer- 
chant had  said.  They  all  live  in  the  steppe,  above  'the 
river,  in  felt  tents.  They  themselves  neither  plough 
nor  eat  bread,  but  the  cattle  and  horses  run  in  droves  in 
the  steppe.  Back  of  the  tents  the  colts  are  tied,  and 
twice  a  day  they  drive  the  mares  there,  and  milk  them, 
and  make  kumys  of  the  milk.  The  women  churn  the 
kumys  and  make  cheese,  and  all  the  men  do  is  to  drink 
kumys  and  tea,  eat  mutton,  and  play  a  pipe.  They  look 
sleek  and  merry,  and  they  celebrate  the  whole  summer. 
The  people  are  all  ignorant,  and  know  no  Kussian,  but 
they  are  kind. 

As  soon  as  they  saw  Pakhom,  they  came  out  of  their 
tents,  and  surrounded  the  guest.  There  was  an  inter- 
preter there.  Pakhom  told  him  that  he  had  come  to  see 
about  some  land.  The  Bashkirs  were  happy,  and  they 
took  Pakhom  by  his  arms,  and  led  him  to  a  nice  tent, 
seated  him  on  rugs,  placed  down  pillows  under  him,  sat 
around  him  in  a  circle,  and  began  to  treat  him  to  tea  and 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  461 

to  kumys.  They  killed  a  sheep,  and  filled  him  with  mut- 
tou.  Pakhdm  fetched  the  presents  from  the  tarantas,  and 
began  to  distribute  them  to  the  Bashkirs.  Pakhom  gave 
the  presents  to  the  Bashkirs,  and  distributed  the  tea  among 
them.  The  Bashkirs  were  happy.  They  prattled  among 
themselves,  and  then  told  the  interpreter  to  translate. 

"  They  command  me  to  tell  you,"  said  the  interpreter, 
"  that  they  like  you,  and  that  it  is  our  custom  to  give 
our  guests  every  pleasure,  and  to  return  presents.  You 
have  given  us  presents ;  now  tell  us  what  you  like  us  to 
give  you  of  our  things." 

"What  I  like,"  said  Pakhom,  "most  of  all,  here,  is 
your  laud.  Where  I  live,"  he  said,  "  the  land  is  crowded 
and  worn  out  by  ploughing,  but  you  have  much  and  good 
land.     I  have  never  seen  such  before." 

The  interpreter  translated.  The  Bashkirs  talked  among 
themselves.  Pakhom  did  not  understand  what  they  were 
saying,  but  he  saw  that  they  were  merry,  shouting  and 
laughing.  Then  they  grew  silent,  and  looked  at  Pakhdm, 
but  the  interpreter  said  : 

"  They  command  me  to  tell  you  that  for  the  good 
which  you  have  done  them  they  are  glad  to  give  you  as 
much  land  as  you  want.  You  have  just  to  point  to  it, 
and  it  is  yours." 

Then  they  talked  again,  and  disputed  among  them- 
selves. Pakhdm  asked  what  they  were  disputing,  and 
the  interpreter  said : 

"Some  say  that  they  must  ask  the  elder  about  the 
land,  and  that  they  cannot  do  it  without  him.  But 
others  say  that  they  can  do  it  without  him," 


VI. 

The  Bashkirs  went  on  disputing,  when  suddenly  a 
man  in  a  fox  cap  came  in.  They  all  grew  silent  and  got 
up,  and  the  interpreter  said : 


462  POPULAR    LEGENDS 

"  This  is  their  elder." 

Pakhom  immediately  took  out  the  best  cloak  and  five 
pounds  of  tea,  and  took  this  to  the  elder.  The  elder 
received  the  presents,  and  sat  down  in  the  place  of 
honour.  The  Bashkirs  be^^an  at  once  to  talk  to  him. 
The  elder  listened  and  listened  to  them,  and  shook  his 
head  to  them,  for  them  to  keep  quiet.  Then  he  began  to 
speak  in  Russian  to  Pakhom. 

"  Well,  you  may  have  it,"  he  said.  "  Take  it  wherever 
you  like.     There  is  a  great  deal  of  land  here." 

"  How  can  I  take  as  much  as  I  want  ? "  thought 
Pakhom.  "  I  must  get  some  statement,  or  else  they  will 
say  that  it  is  mine,  and  then  they  will  take  it  away  from 
me." 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said,  "  for  your  kind  words.  You 
have  a  great  deal  of  land,  but  I  want  only  a  small  part 
of  it.  How  shall  I  know  which  is  mine  ?  I  must 
measure  it  off,  and  get  a  statement  of  some  kind.  For 
God  disposes  of  life  and  of  death.  You  good  people  give 
it  to  me,  but  your  children  may  come  and  take  it  away." 

"  You  are  right,"  said  the  elder,  "  we  shall  give  you  a 
statement." 

Then  Pakhom  said : 

"  I  have  heard  that  a  merchant  came  to  see  you.  You 
made  him  a  present  of  some  land  and  gave  him  a  deed : 
I  ought  to  get  one  myself." 

The  elder  understood  it  all. 

"  That  is  all  possible,"  he  said.  "  We  have  a  scribe, 
and  we  will  go  to  town,  and  affix  our  seals." 

"  And  what  will  the  price  be  ?  "  asked  Pakhom. 

"  We  have  but  one  price :  one  thousand  roubles  a 
day." 

Pakh6m  did  not  understand  him. 

"  What  kind  of  a  measure  is  a  day  ?  How  many 
desyatiuas  are  there  in  it  ? " 

"  We  cannot  figure  it  out,"  he  said.     "  We  sell  by  the 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  463 

day ;  as  much  as  you  can  walk  over  in  one  day  is  yours, 
and  a  day's  price  is  one  thousand  roubles." 

Pakhom  was  surprised. 

"  But  in  one  day  you  can  walk  around  a  great  deal  of 
land,"  he  said. 

The  elder  laughed. 

"  It  is  all  yours,"  he  said.  "  But  there  is  just  one 
condition :  if  you  do  not  come  back  in  one  day  to  the 
place  from  which  you  start,  your  money  is  lost." 

"  But  how  can  I  mark  oti'  what  I  walk  over  ? "  asked 
Pakhom. 

"  We  shall  stand  on  the  spot  which  you  will  choose, 
and  you  wiU  start  on  the  circuit :  take  with  you  a  spade, 
and  wherever  necessary,  in  the  corners,  dig  a  hole,  and 
pile  up  some  turf,  and  we  shall  later  make  a  furrow  with 
a  plough  from  hole  to  hole.  Make  any  circuit  you  please, 
but  by  sundown  you  must  come  back  to  the  spot  from 
which  you  have  started.  Whatever  ground  you  cover  is 
yours." 

Pakhom  was  happy.  They  decided  to  go  out  early  in 
the  morning.  They  talked  awhile,  drank  more  kumys, 
ate  some  mutton,  and  had  tea  again ;  it  was  getting  dark. 
They  bedded  Pakhom  on  feather  beds,  and  then  the  Bash- 
kirs went  away.  They  promised  to  meet  him  at  daybreak, 
and  to  go  out  to  the  spot  before  the  sun  was  up. 


vn. 

Pakhom  lay  down  on  the  feather  bed  and  could  not 
sleep :  he  was  thinking  all  the  time  of  the  land. 

"  I  will  slice  off  a  mighty  tract,"  he  thought.  "  I  can 
walk  about  fifty  versts  in  one  day.  The  day  is  long  now ; 
in  fifty  versts  there  will  be  a  lot  of  land.  The  woi*st  I  will 
sell,  or  let  to  the  peasants,  and  the  best  I  will  keep,  and 
will  settle  on  myself.  I  will  buy  me  two  ox-teams 
and  will  hire  two  more  hands ;  I  will  plough  up  about 


464  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

fifty  desyatinas,  and  on  the  rest  I  will  let  the  cattle 
roam." 

Pakhom  could  not  fall  asleep  all  night.  It  was  only 
before  daybreak  that  he  forgot  himself.  The  moment  he 
became  unconscious,  he  had  a  dream.  He  saw  himself 
lying  in  the  same  tent,  and  some  one  on  the  outside  was 
roaring  with  laughter.  He  wanted  to  see  who  was  laugh- 
ing there,  and  he  thought  he  went  out  of  the  tent,  and 
saw  the  same  Bashkir  sitting  before  the  tent,  holding  his 
belly  with  both  his  hands  and  swaying  in  his  laughter. 
He  went  up  to  him  and  said :  "  What  are  you  laughing 
about  ? "  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  it  was  not  the 
Bashkir,  but  the  merchant  who  had  stopped  at  liis  house 
and  had  told  him  all  about  the  land.  And  he  asked  the 
merchant :  "  How  long  have  you  been  here  ? "  But  it 
was  no  longer  the  merchant ;  it  was  the  peasant  that  long 
ago  had  come  from  the  lower  country.  And  Pakhom  saw 
that  it  was  not  the  peasant,  but  the  devil  himself  with 
horns  and  hoofs  :  he  was  sitting,  and  laughing,  and  before 
him  lay  a  man,  in  his  bare  feet,  and  in  a  shirt  and  trou- 
sers. And  Pakhom  took  a  closer  look  to  see  who  the 
man  was.  And  he  saw  that  it  was  a  dead  man,  —  him- 
self. Pakhdm  was  frightened,  and  awoke.  "  A  man  will 
dream  anything,"  he  said,  as  he  awoke.  He  looked  around 
through  the  open  door,  and  day  was  breaking,  and  it  was 
getting  light. 

"  I  must  wake  the  people  now%"  he  thought,  "  it  is  time 
to  start." 

Pakhom  got  up,  woke  his  labourer  in  the  tarantas,  ordered 
him  to  hitch  up,  and  went  himself  to  wake  the  Bashkirs. 

"  It  is  time  to  go  out  to  lay  off  the  land,"  he  said. 

The  Bashkirs  got  up,  and  gathered  together,  and  the 
elder  arrived.  The  Bashkirs  began  again  to  drink  kumys 
and  wanted  to  treat  Pakhom  to  tea,  but  he  would  not 
wait  so  long. 

"  If  we  are  to  go,  let  us  go,"  he  said.     "  It  is  time." 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  465 


VIII. 

The  Bashkirs  caine  together,  and  some  went  on  horse- 
back, and  others  in  tarantases,  and  they  started.  Pakhom 
went  with  his  labourer  in  his  little  tarantas,  taking  a  spade 
with  them.  They  arrived  in  the  steppe  just  as  it  was 
dawning.  They  rode  up  a  mound,  called  "  shikhan  "  in 
the  Bashkir  language.  They  got  out  of  their  tarantases 
and  dismounted  from  their  horses,  and  gathered  in  a 
circle.  The  elder  walked  over  to  Pakhom,  and  pointed 
with  his  hand. 

"  Everything  you  see,"  he  said,  "  is  ours.  Choose  what- 
ever you  please." 

Pakh(5m's  eyes  were  burning:  it  was  all  prairie  land, 
as  smooth  as  the  palm  of  the  hand  and  as  black  as  the 
poppy,  and  wherever  there  was  a  hollow  there  were 
different  kinds  of  grass,  breast-high. 

The  elder  took  off  his  fox  cap  and  put  it  on  the 
ground. 

"  This  will  be  the  goal,"  he  said.  "  From  here  you  will 
start,  and  here  you  will  come  back.  "WTiatever  you  circle 
about  will  be  yours." 

Pakh(5m  took  out  the  money,  put  it  on  the  cap,  and 
pulled  off  his  caftan,  and  so  was  left  in  his  sleeveless 
coat.  He  pulled  his  girdle  tighter  over  his  belly,  drew 
up  his  trousers,  put  a  wallet  with  bread  in  his  bosom,  tied 
a  can  of  water  to  his  belt,  pulled  up  his  boot-legs,  took  the 
spade  from  his  labourer,  and  got  ready  to  go.  He  tliought 
for  awhile  in  what  direction  to  start,  —  it  was  nice  every- 
where. He  thought :  "  It  makes  no  difference.  I  will  s,o 
eastward."  He  turned  his  face  toward  the  sun,  stretched 
himself,  and  waited  for  the  sun  to  peep  out.  He  thought : 
"  I  must  not  waste  time  in  vain.  It  is  easier  to  walk  while 
it  is  fresh."  The  moment  the  sun  just  glisteued  over  the 
edge,  Pakhom  threw  the  spade  over  his  shoulder  and  started 
over  the  steppe. 


466  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

Pakhdm  walked  neither  leisurely,  nor  fast.  He  walked 
about  a  verst ;  he  stopped,  dug  a  hole,  and  put  some  turf 
in  a  heap,  so  as  to  make  the  sign  clearer.  He  went  on. 
He  was  getting  limbered  up,  and  he  increased  his  step. 
After  walking  a  distance,  he  dug  another  hole. 

Pakhom  looked  around.  The  shikhan  could  easily  be 
seen  in  the  sunshine,  and  the  people  were  standing  there, 
and  the  tires  on  the  wheels  of  the  tarantases  glistened. 
Pakhdm  guessed  that  he  had  walked  five  versts.  He  was 
getting  warm,  so  he  took  off  his  coat,  threw  it  over  his 
shoulder,  and  marched  on.  It  grew  warm.  He  looked 
at  the  sun.     It  was  time  to  think  of  breakfast. 

"  I  have  walked  the  distance  of  a  ploughing,"  thought 
Pakhom,  "  and  there  are  four  of  them  in  a  day,  —  it  is 
too  early  yet  to  turn.     I  must  just  take  off  my  boots." 

He  sat  down,  pulled  off  his  boots,  stuck  them  in  his 
girdle,  and  started  off  again.  It  was  easy  to  walk  now. 
He  thought :  "  I  wiU  walk  another  five  versts,  then  I  will 
turn  to  the  left.  The  land  is  so  fine,  it  is  a  pity  to  leave 
it  out."  The  farther  he  went,  the  nicer  it  was.  He  went 
straight  ahead.  He  turned  back  to  look  :  the  shikhan 
was  barely  visible,  and  the  people  looked  like  black  ants, 
and  something  could  barely  be  seen  glistening  in  the 
sun. 

"  Well,"  thought  Pakhom,  "  I  have  walked  enough  in 
this  direction.  I  must  turn  in.  I  am  hot,  too :  I  must 
take  a  drink." 

He  stopped,  dug  a  large  hole,  piled  up  the  turf,  untied 
the  can,  took  a  drink,  and  bent  sharply  to  the  left.  He 
walked  on  and  on,  and  the  grass  was  liigh,  and  he  felt 
hot. 

Pakhdm  was  beginning  to  grow  tired  ;  he  looked  at  the 
sun,  and  saw  that  it  was  exactly  noon. 

"  Well,"  he  thought,  "  I  must  take  a  rest." 

Pakhdm  stopped  and  sat  down.  He  ate  a  piece  of 
bread  and  drank  some  water,  but  did  not  lie  down :  he 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  467 

was  afraid  he  might  fall  asleep.  After  sitting  awhile 
he  started  off  again.  At  first  the  walking  was  easy.  The 
lunch  gave  him  new  strength.  It  grew  very  hot,  and 
he  felt  sleepy ;  but  he  kept  walking,  thinking  that  he 
would  have  to  suffer  but  a  little  while,  and  would  have  to 
live  long. 

He  walked  quite  a  distance  in  this  direction.  He  was 
on  the  point  of  turning,  when,  behold,  he  came  upon  a 
wet  hollow ;  it  was  a  pity  to  lose  this.  He  thought 
that  flax  would  do  well  there.  He  walked  on  straight. 
He  took  in  the  hollow,  then  dug  a  hole  beyond  it,  and 
turned  around  the  second  corner.  Pakhom  looked  back 
at  the  shikhan ;  it  was  mist-covered  from  the  heat,  quiv- 
ering in  the  air,  and  through  the  haze  he  could  barely  see 
the  people. 

"  Well,"  thought  Pakhom,  "  I  have  taken  two  long 
sides.     I  must  make  this  one  shorter." 

He  started  on  his  third  side,  and  began  to  increase  his 
speed.  He  looked  at  the  sun,  and  it  was  already  near 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  but  he  had  made  only  two 
versts  on  the  third  side.  To  the  goal  it  was  still  fifteen 
versts. 

"  Yes,"  he  thought,  "  though  it  is  going  to  be  a  crooked 
estate,  I  must  walk  in  a  straight  line.  I  must  not  take  in 
too  much,  —  as  it  is  I  have  a  great  deal." 

Pakhom  quickly  dug  a  hole,  and  turned  straight  toward 
the  shikhan. 

IX. 

Pakh6m  walked  straight  toward  the  shikhan,  and  it 
was  getting  hard.  He  was  thirsty,  and  he  had  cut  and 
hurt  his  feet,  and  he  began  to  totter.  He  wanted  to  rest, 
but  he  could  not,  for  he  would  not  get  back  by  sundown. 
The  sun  did  not  wait,  and  kept  going  down  and  down. 

"  Oh,"  he  said,  "  I  hope  I  have  not  made  a  mistake  and 
taken  in  too  much.    What  if  I  do  not  get  back  in  time  ? " 


468  POPULAR   LEGENDS 

He  looked  ahead  of  him  at  the  shikhan  and  up  at  the 
sun :  it  was  still  far  to  the  shikhan,  and  the  sun  was  not 
far  from  the  horizon. 

Pakhom  walked,  and  it  was  hard  for  him,  but  he  kept 
increasing  his  gait.  He  -walked  and  walked,  and  it  was 
far  still,  so  he  began  to  trot.  He  threw  away  his  coat, 
his  boots,  and  the  can  ;  he  threw  away  his  cap,  but  held 
on  to  the  spade,  to  lean  on  it. 

"  Oh,"  he  thought,  "  I  have  made  a  mistake  and  have 
ruined  the  whole  affair.  I  shall  not  get  back  before  sun- 
down." 

And  terror  took  his  breath  away.  He  ran,  and  his 
shirt  and  trousers  stuck  to  his  body  from  perspiration,  and 
his  mouth  was  dry.  In  his  breast  it  was  as  though  bel- 
lows were  being  pumped,  and  in  his  heart  there  was  a 
hammering,  and  his  legs  gave  way  under  him.  Pakhom 
felt  badly :  he  was  afraid  he  might  die  from  too  much 
straining. 

He  was  afraid  he  might  die,  but  he  did  not  dare  to  stop. 

"  I  have  run  so  much,"  he  thought,  "  so  how  can  I  stop 
now  ?     They  will  only  call  me  a  fool." 

He  ran  and  ran,  and  was  getting  near,  and  could  hear 
the  Bashkirs  screaming  and  shouting  to  him,  but  their 
noise  made  him  still  more  excited.  He  ran  with  all  his 
might,  and  the  sun  was  getting  near  the  edge :  it  was  lost 
in  the  mist,  and  looked  as  red  as  blood.  It  was  just 
beginning  to  go  down.  The  sun  was  nearly  gone,  but  it 
was  no  longer  far  to  the  goal.  He  saw  the  people  wav- 
ing their  hands  at  him  from  the  shikhan,  and  encouraging 
him.  He  saw  the  fox  cap  on  the  ground  and  the  money 
on  top  of  it ;  and  he  saw  the  elder  sitting  on  the  ground, 
holding  his  hands  over  his  belly.  And  Pakh6m  recalled 
his  dream. 

"  There  is  a  lot  of  land,"  he  thought,  "  but  will  God 
grant  me  to  live  on  it?  Oh,  I  have  ruined  myself,"  he 
thought.     "  I  shall  not  reach  the  spot." 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  469 

Pakhom  looked  at  the  sun,  and  it  was  down  to  the 
ground,  —  a  part  of  it  was  down,  and  only  an  arch  was 
standing  out  from  the  horizon.  Pakhom  made  a  last 
effort  and  bent  forward  with  his  whole  body  :  his  legs 
hardly  moved  fast  enough  to  keep  him  from  falling.  He 
ran  up  to  the  shikhau,  when  suddenly  it  grew  dark. 
He  looked  around,  and  the  sun  was  down.     He  groaned. 

"  My  labour  is  lost,"  he  thought. 

He  wanted  to  stop,  but  he  heard  the  Bashkirs  shouting 
to  him,  and  then  he  recalled  that  here  below  it  seemed  to 
him  that  the  sun  was  down,  but  that  on  the  shikhan 
it  was  not  yet  down.  Pakhom  made  a  last  effort,  and 
ran  up  the  shikhan.  On  the  shikhan  it  was  still  light. 
He  ran  up,  and  saw  the  cap.  In  front  of  the  cap  sat  the 
elder,  laughing  and  holding  his  hands  on  his  belly. 
Pakhom  recalled  the  dream.  He  groaned,  and  his  legs 
gave  way,  and  he  fell  forward,  and  his  hands  touched  the 
cap. 

"  You  are  a  fine  fellow  !  "  cried  the  elder.  "  You  have 
come  into  a  lot  of  land." 

Pakhdm's  labourer  ran  up,  wishing  to  raise  him,  but 
blood  was  flowing  from  his  mouth,  and  he  was  dead. 

The  Bashkirs  clicked  their  tongues,  pitying  him. 

The  labourer  picked  up  the  spade,  and  dug  a  grave  for 
Pakhom,  as  much  as  he  measured  from  his  feet  to  his 
head,  —  three  arshins,  —  and  buried  him  in  it. 


THE   GODSON 

Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said,  An  eye  for  an  eye, 
and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth  :  but  I  say  unto  you,  That  ye  resist 
not  evil  (Matt.  v.  38,  39). 

Vengeance  is  mine  ;  I  will  repay  (Bom.  xii.  19). 

I. 

A  SON  was  born  to  a  poor  peasant.  The  peasant  was 
delighted,  and  he  went  to  his  neighbour  to  call  a  god- 
father. The  neighbour  refused,  —  what  pleasure  is  there 
in  being  godfather  to  a  poor  peasant's  child  ?  The  poor 
peasant  went  to  another  neighbour,  and  he,  too,  refused. 

He  went  through  the  whole  village,  but  no  one  would 
be  godfather.  The  peasant  went  to  another  village.  On 
his  way  he  met  a  man  and  the  man  stopped  him. 

"  Good  morning,"  he  said,  "  whither  does  God  carry  you, 
man  ?  " 

"  The  Lord  has  given  me  a  child,"  said  the  peasant,  "  in 
childhood  a  care,  in  old  age  a  consolation,  and  after  death 
for  my  soul's  remembrance  ;  but  as  I  am  poor,  no  one  in 
our  village  wants  to  be  godfather.  I  am  on  my  way  to 
look  for  a  godfather." 

And  the  stranger  said  : 

"  Take  me  for  a  godfather." 

The  peasant  was  happy,  thanked  the  stranger,  and 
said : 

"  And  whom  shall  I  call  in  as  a  godmother  ? " 

"  Call  a  merchant's  daughter,"  said  the  stranger.  "  Go 
into  the  town :  on  the  square  there  is  a  stone  house  with 

470 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  471 

shops ;  at  the  entrance  into  the  house  ask  the  merchant 
to  let  his  daughter  go  as  a  godmother." 

The  peasant  hesitated. 

"  How  can  I,"  he  said,  "  oh,  godfather,  go  to  the  rich 
merchant  ?  He  will  hold  me  in  contempt,  and  will  not 
let  his  daughter  go." 

"  That  is  not  your  grief.  Go  and  ask  him.  Be  pre- 
pared to-morrow  morning,  —  I  will  come  to  be  sponsor." 

The  poor  peasant  returned  home,  and  he  went  to  town 
to  see  the  merchant.  He  put  up  the  horse  in  the  yard, 
when  the  merchant  himself  came  out. 

"  What  do  you  want  ? "  he  asked. 

"  It  is  Hke  this,  Mr.  Merchant.  The  Lord  has  given 
me  a  child,  in  childhood  a  care,  in  old  age  a  consolation, 
and  after  death  for  my  soul's  remembrance.  Please,  let 
your  daughter  be  his  godmother." 

'•  When  will  the  christening  be  ? " 

"  To-morrow  morning."  ^ 

"  Very  well,  God  be  with  you.  She  will  come  to-mor- 
row to  mass." 

On  the  next  day  the  godmother  came,  and  so  did  the 
godfather,  and  the  child  was  christened.  The  moment 
the  christening  was  over,  the  godfather  went  away,  and 
no  one  found  out  who  he  was,  or  ever  saw  him  again. 


II. 

The  child  began  to  grow  to  his  parents'  joy :  he  was 
strong,  and  wilHng  to  work,  and  clever,  and  well-behaved. 
The  boy  was  ten  years  old,  when  his  parents  had  him 
taught  to  read.  What  it  takes  others  five  years  to  learn, 
the  boy  learned  in  one,  and  there  was  nothing  else  they 
could  teach  him. 

Easter  week  came.  The  boy  went  down  to  see  his 
godmother,  to  exchange  the  Easter  greeting  with  her. 
When  he  returned  home,  he  asked : 


472  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

"  Father  and  mother,  where  does  my  godfather  live  ?  I 
should  like  to  exchange  the  Easter  greeting  with  him." 

And  the  father  said  to  him : 

"  We  do  not  know,  beloved  son,  where  your  godfather 
lives.  We  ourselves  feel  sorry  for  it.  We  have  not  seen 
him  since  he  christened  you.  We  have  not  heard  of  him, 
and  we  do  not  know  where  he  lives,  or  whether  he  is 
ahve." 

The  boy  bowed  to  his  father  and  to  his  mother : 

"  Father  and  mother,"  he  said,  "  let  me  go  to  tind  him. 
I  want  to  find  him,  —  to  exchange  the  Easter  greeting 
with  him." 

The  parents  let  him  go,  and  he  went  to  find  his  god- 
father. 

in. 

The  boy  left  the  house,  and  travelled  on  the  highway. 
After  walking  half  a  day,  he  met  a  stranger. 

The  stranger  stopped. 

"  Good  day,  boy,"  he  said,  "  whither  does  God  carry 
you  ? " 

And  the  boy  said  : 

"  I  went  to  exchange  the  Easter  greeting  with  my 
godmother ;  when  1  came  back  home  I  asked  my  parents 
where  my  godfather  lived,  as  I  wanted  to  exchange  the 
Easter  greeting  with  him.  My  parents  said  to  me : 
'  We  do  not  know,  son,  where  your  godfather  lives.  After 
christening  you,  he  went  away  from  us,  and  we  know 
nothing  about  him,  and  we  do  not  know  whether  he  is 
alive.'  But  I  am  anxious  to  see  my  godfather,  and  so  I 
have  started  out  to  find  him." 

And  the  stranger  said : 

"  I  am  your  godfather." 

The  boy  was  happy,  and  exchanged  the  Easter  greeting 
with  his  godfather. 

"  Whither  are  you,  godfather,  wending  your  way  ? "  he 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  473 

asked,     "  If  you  are  going  in  our  direction,  come  to  our 
house ;  and  if  you  are  going  home,  I  will  go  with  you." 

And  the  godfather  said  : 

"  I  have  no  time  to  go  now  to  your  house,  —  I  have 
some  business  in  the  villages.  But  I  shall  be  at  home 
to-morrow,  so  come  to  me  then." 

"  But  how  shall  I  find  you,  father  ? " 

"  Walk  all  the  time  toward  the  rising  of  the  sun, 
straight  ahead,  and  you  will  come  to  a  forest,  and  in  the 
forest  there  is  a  clearing.  Sit  down  in  that  clearing,  rest 
yourself,  and  watch  what  will  happen.  When  you  come 
out  of  the  forest,  you  will  see  a  garden,  and  in  the  garden 
there  is  a  booth  with  a  golden  roof :  that  is  my  house. 
Walk  up  to  the  gate,  and  I  will  come  out  to  meet  you." 

Thus  the  godfather  spoke,  and  disappeared  from  the 
godson's  view. 

IV. 

The  boy  went  as  the  godfather  had  told  him.  He 
walked  and  walked,  and  came  to  the  forest.  He  came 
out  on  the  clearing  and  saw  in  the  middle  of  it  a  fir-tree, 
and  on  the  fir-tree  a  rope  was  attached  to  a  branch,  and 
to  the  rope  was  tied  an  oak  log  weighing  some  three  puds. 
Under  the  log  there  was  a  trough  with  honey. 

The  boy  was  wondering  why  the  honey  was  placed 
there,  and  the  log  attached  above  it,  when  there  was  a 
crashing  through  the  woods,  and  he  saw  bears  coming 
out :  in  front  was  the  she-bear ;  she  was  followed  by  a 
yearling,  and  behind  by  three  small  cubs.  The  she-bear 
scented  the  air  and  went  straight  to  the  trough,  and  the 
cubs  after  her. 

The  she-bear  stuck  her  muzzle  into  the  honey:  she 
called  up  the  cubs,  and  they  rushed  up  and  made  for 
the  trough.  The  log  moved  away  a  little  and  turned 
back  and  struck  the  cubs.  When  the  she-bear  saw^  this, 
she  moved  the  log  away  with  her  paw.     The  log  moved 


474  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

back  farther,  came  back  again,  and  struck  into  the  midst 
of  the  cubs,  hitting  some  on  the  back  and  some  on  the 
head. 

The  cubs  howled  and  jumped  away.  The  she-bear 
grew  furious,  grabbed  the  log  above  her  head  with  both 
her  paws,  and  swung  it  far  away  from  herself.  The  log 
flew  up  high ;  in  the  meantime  the  yearling  ran  up  to  the 
trough,  stuck  his  muzzle  into  the  honey,  and  began  to 
lap  it,  and  the  others,  too,  began  to  come  up  to  it.  They 
had  barely  come  up,  when  the  log  swept  back  and 
whacked  the  yearling  on  the  head,  killing  him  on  the 
spot.  The  she-bear  growled  more  than  ever,  and  grabbed 
the  log  and  sent  it  with  all  her  strength  Hying  upward. 

The  log  flew  higher  than  the  branch,  so  that  even  the 
rope  was  slackened,  and  the  she-bear  ran  up  to  the 
trough,  and  all  the  cubs  with  her.  The  log  flew  up  and 
up,  and  stopped,  and  started  downward.  The  lower  it 
went,  the  faster  it  flew.  It  came  down  with  a  crash  and 
banged  the  she-bear  on  the  head.  She  rolled  over,  jerked 
her  legs,  and  was  dead.     The  cubs  ran  away. 

V. 

The  boy  marvelled  at  this,  and  walked  on.  He  came 
to  a  large  garden,  and  in  it  there  was  a  high  palace  with  a 
golden  roof.  The  godfather  was  standing  at  the  gate,  and 
smiling.  He  exchanged  greetings  with  his  godson,  led 
him  through  the  gate,  and  took  him  through  the  garden. 
Even  in  his  dream  the  boy  had  not  thought  of  such 
beauty  and  joy  as  there  were  in  this  garden. 

The  godfather  led  the  boy  into  the  palace.  The  palace 
was  even  more  beautiful.  He  took  the  boy  through  all 
the  rooms :  they  were  one  more  beautiful  than  the  other, 
and  one  more  cheerful  than  the  other,  and  he  brought 
him  to  a  locked  door. 

"  Do  you  see  this  door  ? "  he  said.     "  There  is  no  lock 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  475 

on  it,  —  there  are  only  some  seals.  It  is  possible  to  open 
it,  but  I  command  you  not  to  do  so.  Live  and  enjoy 
yourself  wherever  and  however  you  please ;  enjoy  all 
joys,  but  this  is  the  one  commandment :  do  not  enter 
through  this  door.  But  if  you  do  go  in  through  it,  re- 
member what  you  saw  in  the  woods." 

The  godfather  said  this,  and  went  away.  The  godson 
was  left  alone,  and  began  to  hve.  He  was  so  happy 
and  so  cheerful  that  he  thought  he  had  lived  here  but 
three  hours,  whereas  thirty  years  had  passed.  When  the 
thirty  years  had  passed,  the  godson  went  up  to  the  sealed 
door  and  thought : 

"  Why  did  my  godfather  not  permit  me  to  enter  this 
room  ?     I  will  go  and  see  what  there  is  there." 

He  pushed  the  door,  the  seals  flew  back,  and  the  door 
opened.  The  godson  went  in,  and  he  saw  larger  and 
more  beautiful  rooms  than  any,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
rooms  stood  a  golden  throne.  The  godson  walked  from 
one  room  to  another,  and  he  went  up  to  the  throne,  and 
walked  up  its  steps  and  sat  down.  Near  the  throne  he 
saw  a  sceptre.  He  took  the  sceptre  into  his  hands.  The 
moment  he  lifted  it,  all  four  walls  of  the  room  disap- 
peared, and  he  saw  everything  which  was  going  on  in  the 
world.  He  looked  straight  ahead  of  him,  and  he  saw 
the  sea,  and  ships  sailing  on  it.  He  looked  to  the  right 
and  he  saw  where  foreign,  non-Christian  people  were 
living.  He  looked  to  the  left,  and  he  saw  where  Christian 
people,  but  not  Eussians,  were  hving.  He  looked  into 
the  fourth  side,  and  there  were  our  Eussians. 

"  I  will  just  see,"  he  said,  "  what  is  going  on  at  home,  — 
whether  the  corn  grows  well  there." 

He  looked  at  his  field  and  saw  cocks  of  corn  there. 
He  began  to  count  the  cocks,  to  see  how  much  corn 
there  was,  and  he  saw  a  cart  coming  into  the  field,  and  a 
man  sitting  inside  of  it.  The  godson  thought  that  his 
father  was  coming  in  the  night  to  haul  away  the  ricks. 


476  POPULAR    LEGENDS 

He  took  a  good  look  at  him,  and  saw  that  it  was  Vaska 
Kiidrashov,  the  thief,  who  was  coming  in  the  cart.  He 
drove  up  to  the  cocks,  and  began  to  load  them  on.  That 
made  the  godson  angry.     He  shouted  : 

"  Father,  your  sheaves  are  being  stolen  from  the  field  ! " 

His  father  woke  up  iu  the  pasture. 

"  I  had  a  dream  that  they  are  steahng  my  sheaves,"  he 
said.     "  I  must  go  and  see." 

He  jumped  on  a  horse,  and  rode  off.  When  he  came 
to  the  field,  he  saw  Vasili,  and  so  he  called  the  peasants 
together.  They  beat  Vasili,  and  tied  him,  and  took  him 
to  the  jail. 

The  godson  now  looked  into  the  town  where  his  god- 
mother was  living.  He  saw  her  married  to  a  merchant. 
She  was  lying  and  sleeping,  but  her  husband  got  up  and 
went  to  his  mistress.  The  godson  cried  to  his  god- 
mother : 

"  Get  up  !     Your  husband  is  doing  something  bad." 

His  godmother  jumped  up,  dressed  herself,  found  out 
where  her  husband  was,  disgraced  and  beat  the  mistress, 
and  drove  her  husband  away  from  her. 

Then  the  godson  looked  at  his  mother,  and  saw  her 
lying  in  the  hut,  and  a  robber  slinking  into  the  house 
and  breaking  into  her  trunk. 

The  mother  awoke,  and  cried  aloud.  When  the  robber 
saw  her,  he  took  hold  of  an  axe,  and  swung  it,  wishing 
to  kill  her. 

The  godson  did  not  hold  out,  but  hurled  the  sceptre  at 
the  robber,  and  struck  him  straight  on  his  temple,  and 
killed  him  on  the  spot. 

VL 

The  moment  the  godson  killed  the  robber,  the  walls 
closed  up  again,  and  the  room  became  what  it  was. 
The  door  opened,  and  the   godfather    came   in.     He 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  477 

walked  over  to  his  godson,  took  his  hand,  led  him  down 
from  the  throne,  and  said : 

"  You  did  not  obey  my  command,  —  you  have  done 
a  bad  thing  in  opening  the  forbidden  door ;  another  bad 
thing  you  did  when  you  ascended  the  throne  and  took 
my  sceptre ;  a  third  bad  thing  you  did,  —  you  added 
much  evil  to  the  world.  If  you  had  been  sitting  here 
another  hour,  you  would  have  ruined  half  the  people." 

And  the  godfather  led  his  godson  up  to  the  throne,  and 
took  the  sceptre  into  his  hand.  And  again  were  the  walls 
removed,  and  everything  became  visible. 

And  the  godfather  said : 

"  See  now  what  you  have  done  to  your  father !  Vasili 
has  been  a  year  in  prison,  where  he  has  learned  all  kinds 
of  evil  deeds  and  has  become  entirely  a  beast.  See  there  ! 
He  has  driven  off  two  of  your  father's  horses,  and,  you 
see,  he  is  setting  tire  to  his  farmhouses.  This  is  what 
you  have  done  to  your  father." 

The  moment  the  godson  saw  his  father's  house  on  fire, 
the  godfather  hid  this  from  him,  and  ordered  him  to  look 
in  another  direction. 

"  Here,"  he  said,  "the  husband  of  your  godmother  has 
abandoned  his  wife  for  more  than  a  year,  and  is  making 
free  with  other  women,  while  she,  from  grief,  has  taken 
to  drink,  and  his  former  mistress  is  entirely  lost.  This  is 
what  you  have  done  to  your  godmother." 

And  the  godfather  hid  this  from  him,  and  showed  him 
his  house.  And  he  saw  his  mother :  she  was  weeping 
on  account  of  her  sins,  and  repenting  them,  and  saying, 
"  It  would  have  been  better  if  the  murderer  had  killed 
me  then,  for  I  should  not  have  committed  so  many  sins." 

"  This  is  what  you  have  done  to  your  mother." 

And  the  godfather  hid  this,  too,  from  him,  and  pointed 
downward.  And  the  godson  saw  the  robber-  two  guards 
were  holding  him  before  the  dark  place. 

And  the  godfather  said  to  him : 


478  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

"  This  man  has  ruined  nine  souls.  He  ought  to  redeem 
his  own  sins ;  but  you  have  killed  him,  and  so  have  taken 
all  his  sins  upon  yourself.  Now  you  will  have  to  answer 
for  all  his  sins.  That  is  what  you  have  done  to  yourself. 
The  she-bear  pushed  away  the  log,  and  so  disturbed  the 
cubs ;  she  pushed  it  away  a  second  time,  and  killed 
the  yearling;  she  pushed  it  away  a  third  time,  and 
killed  herself.  You  have  done  the  same.  I  give  you 
now  thirty  years'  time.  Go  into  the  world,  and  redeem 
the  sins  of  the  robber.  If  you  do  not  redeem  them,  you 
will  have  to  go  in  his  place." 

And  the  godson  said  : 

"  How  can  I  redeem  his  sins  ? " 

And  the  godfather  said  : 

"  When  you  shall  have  freed  the  world  from  as  much 
evil  as  you  have  carried  into  it,  you  will  have  redeemed 
your  sins  as  well  as  those  of  the  robber." 

And  the  godson  asked  : 

"  How  can  I  free  the  world  from  sins  ?  " 

And  the  godfather  said : 

"  Go  straight  toward  the  rising  sun,  and  you  will  come 
to  a  field,  with  men  upon  it.  Watch  the  people  to  see 
what  they  are  doing,  and  teach  them  what  you  know. 
Then  walk  on,  and  take  note  of  what  you  see ;  on  the 
fourth  day  you  will  come  to  a  forest ;  in  the  forest  there 
is  a  cell,  and  in  the  cell  lives  a  hermit.  Tell  him  every- 
thing that  has  happened.  He  will  teach  you  what  to  do. 
When  you  have  done  everything  that  the  hermit  com- 
mands you  to  do,  you  will  have  redeemed  your  sins  and 
those  of  the  robber." 

Thus  spoke  the  godfather,  and  he  saw  his  godson  out 
of  the  gate. 

VII. 

The  godson  went  away.     As  he  walked,  he  thought : 
"  How  can  I  free  the  world  from  evil  ?     They  destroy 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  479 

evil  by  sending  evil  people  to  hard  labour,  locking  them 
up  in  prisons,  and  putting  them  to  death.  What  shall  I 
do,  then,  to  destroy  evil,  and  not  to  take  other  people's 
sins  upon  myself  ? " 

The  godson  thought  and  thought,  but  could  not  think 
out  anything.  He  walked  for  a  long  time,  and  finally 
came  to  a  field.  In  the  field  the  corn  had  grown  large 
and  thick,  and  it  was  time  to  harvest  it.  The  godson 
saw  a  heifer  get  into  the  corn.  When  the  people  saw  it, 
they  mounted  their  horses,  and  began  to  drive  the  heifer 
through  the  corn,  now  from  one  side  and  now  from 
another.  The  moment  the  heifer  was  ready  to  run  out 
of  the  corn,  a  rider  passed  by,  which  frightened  the  heifer, 
and  she  went  back  into  the  corn ;  again  they  galloped 
after  her  through  the  corn.  But  a  woman  was  standing  in 
the  road,  and  weeping  :  "  They  are  going  to  get  my  heifer." 

And  the  godson  said  to  the  peasants : 

"  Why  are  you  doing  this  ?  Eide  all  of  you  out  of  the 
com.     Let  the  woman  call  her  heifer  !  " 

The  people  obeyed  him.  The  woman  went  up  to  the 
edge  and  began  to  call  her  heifer :  "  Tpryusi,  tpryusi, 
browny,  tpryusi,  tpryusi ! " 

The  heifer  pricked  her  ears,  stopped  to  listen,  and  ran 
straight  toward  the  woman,  and  put  her  mouth  into 
the  woman's  lap,  almost  knocking  her  down.  And  the 
peasants  were  glad,  and  the  woman  was  glad,  and 
the  heifer  was  glad. 

The  godson  walked  on,  thinking  : 

"  Now  I  see  that  evil  increases  through  evil.  The 
more  people  persecute  evil,  the  more  do  they  multiply  it. 
It  is  evident  that  evil  cannot  be  destroyed  through  evil. 
But  I  do  not  know  how  to  destroy  it.  It  is  well  that  the 
heifer  obeyed  her  mistress ;  but  how  could  she  have  been 
called  out,  if  she  had  not  obeyed  ? " 

The  godson  thought  and  thought,  but  could  not  think 
it  out.     He  went  farther. 


480  POPULAR  LEGENDS 


VIII. 

He  walked  and  walked,  until  he  came  to  a  village. 
He  asked  at  the  outer  hut  to  be  allowed  to  stay 
there  overnight.  The  mistress  let  him  in.  There 
was  no  one  in  the  hut  but  the  mistress,  and  she  was 
washing. 

The  godson  went  in,  chmbed  on  the  oven,  and  began  to 
look  around,  to  see  what  the  mistress  was  doing.  He  saw 
that  she  had  washed  the  house,  and  was  now  washing  the 
table.  After  she  had  washed  the  table,  she  began  to  wipe 
it  with  a  dirty  towel.  She  began  to  wipe  it  on  one  side, 
but  the  table  did  not  get  clean :  the  dirty  towel  left  strips 
of  dirt  on  the  table.  She  began  to  wipe  in  another  direc- 
tion ;  she  wiped  off  some  of  the  stripes,  but  made  other 
stripes  come  out.  She  began  once  more  to  rub  length- 
wise, and  again  it  was  the  same :  she  soiled  the  table 
with  the  dirty  towel.  She  wiped  off  the  dirt  in  one 
place,  and  rubbed  it  on  in  another.  The  godson  looked 
at  it  for  awhile,  and  said : 

"  Mistress,  what  are  you  doing  there  ?  " 

"  Do  you  not  see  ? "  she  said.  "  I  am  cleaning  up  for 
the  hohday.  I  somehow  cannot  get  the  table  clean,  —  it 
is  so  dirty.     I  am  all  worn  out  from  it." 

"If  you  would  just  wash  the  towel,"  he  said,  "you 
would  be  able  to  get  it  clean." 

The  mistress  did  so,  and  she  got  her  table  clean. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said,  "  for  having  taught  me." 

Next  morning  the  godson  bade  the  mistress  good-bye, 
and  went  away.  He  walked  and  walked,  and  came  to  a 
forest.  There  he  saw  some  peasants  bending  hoops. 
The  godson  went  up  to  them,  and  saw  the  peasants 
walking  in  a  circle,  but  the  hoop  did  not  bend.  He 
looked  on  awhile,  and  saw  that  the  vise  was  not  fastened, 
but  turning  around.     So  he  said  : 

"  Friends,  what  are  you  doing  there  ? " 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  481 

"We  are  bending  hoops.  We  have  steamed  them 
twice,  and  we  are  all  worn  out,  —  they  do  not  bend." 

"  Friends,  fasten  the  vise,  for  you  are  turning  around 
with  it." 

The  peasants  obeyed  him,  fastened  the  vise,  and  things 
went  after  that. 

The  godson  remained  with  them  overnight,  and  went 
farther.  He  walked  a  whole  day  and  a  night,  and  before 
the  dawn  came  to  some  drovers.  He  lay  down  near  them. 
He  saw  that  the  drovers  had  put  away  the  cattle,  and  were 
trying  to  start  a  fire.  They  took  dry  leaves  and  set  them 
on  fire,  and  before  they  burned  well,  they  put  on  them  wet 
twigs.  The  twigs  hissed,  and  the  fire  went  out.  The 
drovers  took  some  more  dry  leaves  and  set  them  on  fire, 
and  again  put  on  wet  twigs.  The  fire  was  again  put  out. 
They  worked  for  a  long  time,  but  the  fire  would  not 
burn. 

And  the  godson  said : 

"  Don't  be  in  a  hurry  to  put  on  the  twigs,  but  first  let 
the  leaves  burn  well.  When  the  fire  is  well  started,  you 
may  put  on  the  twigs." 

The  drovers  did  so :  they  started  a  good  fire,  and  then 
heaped  up  the  twigs.  The  twigs  caught  fire  and  burned 
well.  The  godson  remained  with  them  awhile,  and  then 
went  farther.  He  thought  and  thought  why  he  had  seen 
these  three  things,  but  he  could  not  understand. 

IX. 

The  godson  walked  and  walked.  A  day  passed.  He 
came  to  a  forest,  and  in  the  forest  was  a  cell.  He  went 
up  to  the  cell,  and  knocked.     A  voice  inside  asked : 

"Who  is  there?" 

"A  great  sinner:  I  want  to  redeem  other  people's 
sms. 

The  hermit  came  out,  and  asked : 


482  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

"  What  are  those  sins  of  other  people  which  are  upon 
you  ? " 

The  godson  told  him  everything :  about  his  godfather, 
and  about  the  she-bear  and  her  cubs,  and  about  the  throne 
in  the  sealed  room,  and  about  what  the  godfather  had 
commanded  him  to  do,  and  about  his  having  seen  the 
peasants  trample  down  all  the  corn,  and  about  the  heifer's 
coming  out  herself  to  her  mistress. 

"  I  now  understand  that  evil  cannot  be  destroyed  by 
evil,  but  I  cannot  understand  how  it  is  to  be  destroyed. 
Teach  me  how." 

And  the  hermit  said : 

"  Tell  me  what  else  you  saw  on  the  road." 

The  godson  told  him  about  the  woman's  cleaning  up, 
and  about  the  peasants'  bending  of  the  hoops,  and  about 
the  drovers'  making  a  fire. 

When  the  hermit  had  heard  it  all,  he  went  back  to  his 
cell  and  brought  out  a  notched  and  battered  axe. 

"  Come  with  me,"  he  said. 

The  hermit  went  a  distance  away  from  the  cell,  and 
pointed  to  a  tree. 

"  Cut  it  down,"  he  said. 

The  godson  cut  the  tree,  and  it  fell  down. 

"  Cut  it  now  into  three  parts." 

The  godson  cut  it  into  three  parts.  The  hermit  went 
again  into  the  cell,  and  brought  some  fire. 

"  Burn  the  three  logs,"  he  said. 

The  godson  started  the  fire  and  burned  the  three  logs, 
and  three  smudges  w^ere  left. 

"  Bury  them  half  into  the  ground,  —  like  this." 

The  godson  buried  them. 

"  You  see,  at  the  foot  of .  the  hill  is  a  river :  bring  the 
water  from  there  in  your  mouth,  and  water  them.  Water 
this  smudge  as  you  taught  the  woman  ;  water  this  smudge 
as  you  taught  the  coopers ;  water  this  smudge  as  you 
taught  the  drovers.     When  all  three  shall  have  sprouted 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  483 

and  three  apple-trees  shall  have  grown  from  the  smudges, 
you  will  know  how  to  destroy  evil  among  men;  and 
then  you  will  redeem  the  sins." 

Having  said  this,  the  hermit  went  back  to  his  cell. 
The  godson  thought  and  thought,  but  could  not  under- 
stand what  the  hermit  had  told  him.  However,  he  did 
as  he  was  commanded. 

X. 

The  godson  went  to  the  river,  filled  his  mouth  full  of 
water,  poured  it  out  on  a  smudge,  and  went  back  for 
more,  —  and  so  he  watered  the  other  two  smudges.  The 
godson  grew  tired,  and  wanted  to  eat.  He  went  to 
the  cell,  to  ask  the  hermit  for  something  to  eat.  He 
opened  the  door,  but  the  hermit  lay  dead  on  a  bench. 
The  godson  looked  around  and  found  some  hardtack, 
which  he  ate ;  then  he  found  a  spade,  and  began  to  dig 
a  grave  for  the  hermit.  In  the  night  he  carried  water  to 
the  smudges,  and  in  the  daytime  he  dug  the  grave.  He 
had  just  finished  the  grave  and  was  about  to  bury  the 
hermit,  when  people  came  from  the  village,  bringing  food 
for  the  hermit. 

The  people  learned  that  the  hermit  had  died,  and  that 
he  had  blessed  the  godson  in  his  place.  The  people 
buried  the  hermit,  and  left  the  bread  for  the  godson ; 
they  promised  to  bring  him  more,  and  went  away. 

And  so  the  godson  remained  to  live  in  the  place  of  the 
hermit.  He  lived  there,  and  ate  what  the  people  brought 
to  him,  and  kept  doing  the  work  which  he  had  been  com- 
manded to  do,  carrying  water  in  his  mouth  from  the  river, 
to  water  the  smudges. 

Thus  the  godson  passed  a  year,- and  many  people  began 
to  come  to  him.  The  rumour  went  abroad  that  a  holy 
man  was  living  in  the  forest,  finding  his  salvation  in 
carrying  water  in  his  mouth  from  the  river  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill,  and  watering  the  burned  stumps.     A  multitude 


484  POPULAK  LEGENDS 

began  to  come  to  him.  Eich  merchants,  too,  began  to 
come  to  him,  bringing  him  presents.  The  godson 
took  nothing  from  them,  except  what  he  needed,  and 
what  they  gave  him,  he  turned  over  to  other  poor 
people. 

And  this  is  the  way  the  godson  lived:  half  the  day 
he  carried  water  in  his  mouth,  watering  the  smudges, 
and  the  other  half  he  rested  himself  and  received  the 
people. 

And  the  godson  came  to  think  that  he  had  been  com- 
manded to  live  in  this  manner,  thus  destroying  evil  and 
redeeming  sins. 

So  the  godson  lived  another  year,  and  did  not  miss 
watering  the  smudges  a  single  day,  but  they  did  not 
sprout. 

One  day  he  was  sitting  in  the  cell,  when  he  heard  a 
man  ride  by  him  siugiug  songs.  The  godson  went  out  to 
see  who  the  man  was.  He  saw  that  he  was  a  strong  lad. 
He  wore  good  clothes,  and  his  horse  and  the  saddle  under 
him  were  fine. 

The  godson  stopped  him,  and  asked  him  what  kind  of 
a  man  he  was  and  whither  he  was  riding. 

The  man  stopped. 

"  I  am  a  robber,"  he  said,  "  and  am  travelling  along  the 
roads,  killing  people :  the  more  people  I  kill,  the  merrier 
the  songs  are  which  I  sing." 

The  godson  was  frightened,  and  said : 

"  How  can  I  destroy  the  evil  in  this  man  ?  It  is  easy 
enough  for  me  to  talk  to  those  who  come  to  me,  and 
themselves  repent  their  sins.  But  this  one  boasts  of 
evil." 

The  godson  did  not  say  anything,  but  went  away,  and 
thought  what  to  do  now.  "If  the  robber  takes  it  into 
his  head  to  rove  here,  the  people  will  become  scared,  and 
will  stop  coming  to  see  me.  They  will  lose  their  advan- 
tage, and  how  shall  I  live  then  ? " 


POPULAR  LEGENDS 


485 


And  the  godson  stopped,  and  said  to  the  robber : 

"  People  come  here,  not  to  boast  of  evil,  but  to  repent 
and  to  pray  for  their  sins.  Repent,  if  you  are  afraid  of 
God ;  if  you  do  not  wish  to  repent,  go  away  from  here, 
and  never  come  back  to  disturb  me,  and  to  frighten  the 
people.  If  you  will  not  pay  any  attention  to  me,  God 
will  punish  you." 

The  robber  laughed. 

"  I  am  not  afraid  of  God,"  he  said,  "  and  I  will  pay  no 
attention  to  you.  You  are  not  my  master.  You  live  by 
your  praying,  and  I  live  by  robbery.  All  have  to  hve  in 
some  way.  Teach  the  women  that  come  to  see  you,  but 
you  cannot  teach  me.  Since  you  have  mentioned  God  to 
me,  I  will  kill  two  additional  men  to-morrow.  I  should 
have  killed  you,  but  I  do  not  want  to  soil  my  hands. 
Don't  ever  get  in  my  way  again." 

Thus  the  robber  threatened  him,  and  went  away.  He 
never  came  back,  and  the  godson  lived  quietly,  as  before, 
for  eight  years. 

XL 

One  night  the  godson  went  out  to  water  his  smudges. 
He  came  back  to  the  cell,  to  rest  himself,  and  he  sat  and 
looked  at  the  footpath,  to  see  whether  people  would  come 
soon.  On  that  day  not  one  man  came.  The  godson  sat 
there  alone  until  evening,  and  he  felt  lonely,  and  thought 
about  his  life.  He  remembered  how  the  robber  had 
rebuked  him  for  living  by  praying.  And  so  the  godson 
looked  back  upon  his  life. 

"  I  am  not  living  as  the  hermit  told  me  to,"  he  thought. 
"  The  hermit  imposed  a  penance  on  me,  wbile  I  have 
earned  a  living  and  fame  by  it.  And  I  have  been  so 
tempted  by  it  that  I  feel  lonely  when  people  do  not  come 
to  me.  I  have  not  redeemed  my  former  sins,  and  have 
only  added  new  ones.  I  will  go  into  the  woods,  to 
another  place,  so  that  the  people  may  not  find  me.     I 


486  POPULAR   LEGENDS 

will  live  all  by  myself,  so  as  to  redeem  my  old  sins,  and 
not  add  new  ones." 

Thus  thought  the  hermit,  and  he  took  a  bag  full  of 
hardtack  and  a  spade,  and  went  away  from  the  cell, 
toward  a  ravine,  in  order  to  build  him  an  earth  hut  in  a 
hidden  place,  where  the  people  might  not  see  him. 

The  godson  was  walking  with  his  bag  and  with  his 
spade,  when  the  robber  rode  up  to  him.  The  godson 
became  frightened,  and  wanted  to  run,  but  the  robber 
overtook  him. 

"  Whither  are  you  going  ? "  he  said. 

The  godson  told  him  that  he  wanted  to  go  away  from 
the  people,  to  a  place  where  the  people  could  not  reach 
him.     The  robber  was  surprised. 

"  What  will  you  now  live  by,  if  people  stop  coming  to 
you  ? " 

The  godson  had  not  thought  of  it  before,  but  when  the 
robber  asked  him  this,  he  thought  of  the  food. 

"  By  what  God  will  give  me,"  he  said. 

The  robber  said  nothing,  and  rode  on. 

"  Why  did  I  not  tell  him  anything  about  his  life  ? " 
thought  the  godson.  "  Maybe  he  would  repent  now.  He 
seems  to  be  kinder  to-day,  and  did  not  threaten  to  kill 
me." 

And  the  godson  called  out  to  the  robber  : 

"  But  still  you  must  repent.  You  cannot  get  away 
from  God." 

The  robber  turned  his  horse  around.  He  pulled  his 
knife  out  of  the  girdle,  and  sw^ung  it  to  strike  the  godson. 
The  godson  became  frightened,  and  ran  into  the  forest. 

The  robber  did  not  run  after  him,  but  only  said : 

"  Twice  have  I  forgiven  you,  but  if  you  come  in  my 
way  the  third  time,  I  will  kill  you." 

Having  said  this,  he  rode  off.  In  the  evening  the 
godson  went  to  water  the  smudges,  and,  behold,  one  of 
them  had  sprouted  ;  an  apple-tree  was  gruwing  from  it. 


POPULAR  LEGENDS  487 


xn. 

The  godson  hid  himself  from  the  people,  and  began  to 
live  alone.     His  hardtack  gave  out. 

"  Well,"  he  thought,  "  now  I  will  look  for  herbs." 

He  went  out  to  look  for  herbs,  when  he  saw  a  bag  with 
hardtack  hanging  on  a  branch.  He  took  it,  and  lived 
on  that  hardtack. 

When  this  hardtack  gave  out,  another  bag  of  it  was 
hanging  on  the  same  branch.  And  thus  the  godson 
lived.  But  he  had  this  grief,  —  he  was  afraid  of  the 
robber.  Whenever  he  heard  the  robber,  he  hid  himself; 
He  thought : 

"  If  he  kills  me,  I  shall  not  have  a  chance  to  redeem 
my  sins." 

Thus  he  lived  another  ten  years.  The  one  apple-tree 
grew,  but  the  other  smudges  remained  such  as  they 
were. 

One  morning  the  godson  went  early  to  do  his  work ; 
he  watered  the  earth  around  the  smudges,  and  he  was 
tired  and  sat  down  to  rest  himself.  He  was  sitting  and 
resting  himself,  and  thinking  : 

"  I  have  sinned,  to  be  afraid  of  death.  If  God  so 
wishes,  I  can  redeem  my  sins  by  my  death." 

No  sooner  had  he  said  this,  than  he  heard  the  robber 
riding  along,  and  cursing.  The  godson  heard  him,  and 
thought : 

"  Except  from  God,  nothing  good  nor  evil  will  befall 
me  from  anybody,"  and  he  went  to  meet  the  robber. 

He  saw  that  the  robber  was  not  travelling  by  himself, 
but  was  bringing  a  man  with  him  on  the  saddle.  The 
man's  hands  and  mouth  were  tied.  The  man  was  silent, 
and  the  robber  kept  cursing  him.  The  godson  went  up 
to  the  robber,  and  stood  in  front  of  the  horse. 

"  Whither  are  you  taking  this  man  ? "  he  asked. 

"  I  am  taking  him  to  the  forest.     He  is  the  son  of  a 


488  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

meichant.  He  will  not  tell  me  where  his  father's  money- 
is  hidden,  and  I  will  flog  him  until  he  does  tell." 

The  robber  wanted  to  ride  on  ;  but  the  godson  did  not 
let  him,  —  he  seized  the  horse  by  the  bridle. 

"  Let  this  man  go,"  he  said. 

The  robber  grew  angry  at  the  godson,  and  wanted  to 
strike  him. 

"  Do  YOU  want  me  to  do  the  same  to  you  ?  I  have 
told  you  I  would  kill  you.     Let  me  go  ! " 

The  godson  was  not  frightened. 

"  I  will  not  let  you  go,"  he  said.  "  I  am  not  afraid  of 
you,  but  only  of  God.  God  does  not  allow  me  let  you 
go.     Set  the  man  free  ! " 

Tlie  robber  scowled,  took  out  his  knife,  cut  the  ropes, 
and  set  free  the  merchant's  son. 

"  Get  away  from  me,"  he  said.  "  Let  me  not  catch  you 
!" 

The  merchant's  son  leaped  down  and  ran  away.  The 
robber  wanted  to  ride  on,  but  the  godson  stopped  him 
again ;  he  began  to  talk  to  him  about  giving  up  his  bad 
life.  The  robber  stood  still  awhile  and  listened  to  all  he 
had  to  say,  but  said  nothing,  and  rode  off. 

The  next  morning  the  godson  went  to  water  the 
smudges.  Behold,  auotlier  smudge  had  sprouted,  —  again 
it  was  an  apple-tree  that  was  growing  from  it. 


XIIL 

Another  ten  years  passed  One  day  the  godson  was 
sitting.  He  was  not  wishing  for  anything,  and  he  was  not 
afraid  of  anything,  and  his  heart  was  glad.  And  the  god- 
son thought : 

"  What  grace  is  given  by  God  to  men !  But  they 
torment  themselves  in  vain.  They  ought  to  live  in  joy 
all  the  time." 

And  he  thought  of  all  the  evil  of  men,  and  how  they 


again 


POPULAR   LEGENDS  489 

tormented  themselves.  And  he  began  to  feel  sorry  for 
men. 

"  In  vain,"  he  thought,  "  I  live  this  way ;  I  must  go 
and  tell  people  what  I  know." 

No  sooner  had  he  thought  so,  than  he  heard  the  robber 
coming  along.  He  let  the  robber  pass  by  him,  and 
thought : 

"  What  use  is  there  in  speaking  to  him  ?  He  will  not 
understand." 

At  first  he  thought  so,  but  he  thought  it  over  again, 
and  went  out  on  the  road.  The  robber  passed  by,  look- 
ing gloomy  and  staring  at  the  ground.  The  godson  looked 
at  him,  and  felt  sorry  for  him,  and  ran  up  to  him,  and 
seized  him  by  his  knee. 

"  Dear  brother,"  he  said,  "  have  pity  on  thy  soul ! 
God's  spirit  is  in  you  !  You  are  suffering  yourself,  and 
are  causing  others  to  suffer,  and  you  will  suffer  even  more. 
But  God  loves  you,  and  has  such  grace  in  store  for  you  ! 
Do  not  ruin  yourself,  brother  !     Change  your  life  !  " 

The  robber  scowled,  and  turned  his  face  away. 

"  Get  away  from  me,"  he  said. 

The  godson  embraced  the  robber's  knee  even  more 
firmly  and  began  to  weep. 

The  robber  raised  his  eyes  to  the  godson.  He  looked 
and  looked  at  him,  and  chmbed  down  from  his  horse,  and 
knelt  before  the  godson. 

"  You  have  vanquished  me,  old  man,"  he  said.  "  Twenty 
years  have  I  struggled  with  you,  and  you  have  overcome 
me.  I  have  no  power  over  myself ;  you  can  do  with  me 
what  you  please.  When  you  tried  to  persuade  me  the  first 
time,  I  only  grew  more  savage.  I  began  to  think  of 
your  speeches  only  when  you  went  away  from  people 
and  found  out  that  you  yourself  did  not  need  anything 
from  men." 

And  the  godson  recalled  that  the  woman  washed  the 
table  clean  only  when  she  washed  the  towel.     When  he 


490  POPULAR  LEGENDS 

stopped  caring  for  himself,  and  cleansed  his  own  heart, 
he  was  able  to  cleanse  also  the  hearts  of  others. 

And  the  robber  said  : 

"  And  my  heart  turned  in  me  only  when  you  did  not 
fear  death." 

And  the  godson  recalled  that  the  coopers  could  bend 
the  hoop  only  when  the  vise  was  made  firm.  When  he 
stopped  fearing  death,  and  made  his  hfe  firm  in  God,  the 
unruly  heart  was  vanquished. 

And  the  robber  said : 

"  And  my  heart  melted  completely  only  when  you  took 
pity  on  me  and  wept  before  me." 

The  godson  was  happy,  and  led  the  robber  to  where 
the  smudges  were.  When  they  came  up  to  them,  an 
apple-tree  had  sprouted  from  the  tliird  smudge.  And 
the  godson  recalled  that  the  wet  branches  caught  fire 
with  the  drovers  only  when  the  fire  burned  bright.  When 
his  heart  burned  bright,  another  man's  heart,  too,  burned 
up. 

And  the  godson  was  glad,  because  now  he  had  redeemed 
the  sins. 

He  told  all  this  to  the  robber,  and  died.  The  robber 
buried  him,  and  began  to  live  as  the  godson  had  com- 
manded him,  and  so  he  taught  the  people. 


THREE    SONS 

1892 


THREE    SONS 


A  FATHER  gave  his  son  some  property,  corn,  and  cattle, 
and  said  to  him  : 

"  Live  like  me,  and  thou  wilt  always  fare  well." 
The    son    took    his   patrimony,  went  away   from    the 
father,  aiid  began  to  live  for  his  pleasure.     The   father 
had,  indeed,  told  him  to  live  like  him.     "  He  lives  and 
enjoys  himself,  and  so  will  I." 

Thus  he  lived  a  year,  two,  ten,  twenty  years,  —  and 
wasted  all  his  patrimony,  and  he  had  nothing  left ; 
and  he  began  to  ask  his  father  to  give  him  more ;  but 
his  father  did  not  listen  to  him.  Then  he  began  to  pro- 
pitiate his  father  and  to  give  to  him  the  best  things  he 
had,  and  to  ask  him  again.  But  his  father  tuade  no  reply 
to  him.  Then  the  son  began  to  ask  his  father's  forgive- 
ness, thinking  that  he  had  offended  him  in  some  way, 
and  again  asked  him  to  give  him  something ;  but  his 
father  did  not  say  a  word. 

Then  the  son  began  to  imprecate  his  father,  saying : 
"  If  thou  dost  not  give  me  now,  why  didst  thou  give 
me  before  and  dole  out  my  part  to  me  and  promise  me 
that  I  should  fare  well  ?  All  my  former  joys,  when  I 
spent  my  estate,  are  not  worth  one  hour  of  the  present 
torments.  I  see  that  I  perish,  and  there  is  no  salvation. 
And  who  is  to  blame  ?  Thou.  Thou  knewest  that  my 
estate  would  not  be  sufficient,  and  thou  didst  not  give  me 

more.     All  thou  toldest  me  was,  "  Live  like  me,  and  thou 

493 


494  THREE    SONS 

wilt  fare  well.  And  I  lived  like  thee.  Thou  livedst  for 
thy  joy,  and  I  lived  for  mine.  Thou  hast  more  left 
for  thyself,  so  thou  hast  some,  while  I  have  not  enough. 
Thou  art  not  a  father,  but  a  deceiver  and  evil-doer ! 
Cursed  is  my  hfe,  and  cursed  be  thou,  evil-doer  and  tor- 
mentor, —  I  do  not  want  to  know  thee,  and  I  hate  thee  ! " 
The  father  gave  also  some  property  to  the  second  son, 
saying  only : 

"  Live  like  me,  and  thou  wilt  always  fare  well." 
The  second  sou  was  not  so  much  rejoiced  at  his  estate 
as  had  been  the  first.  He  thought  that  he  received  his 
due ;  but  he  knew  what  had  happened  with  his  elder 
brother,  and  so  began  to  think  that  he  might  lose  his 
property  like  the  first.  He  understood  this  much,  that 
his  eldest  brother  had  not  understood  correctly  the  words, 
"  Live  like  me,"  and  that  it  was  not  right  to  live  only  for 
one's  own  pleasure. 

He  began  to  brood  over  the  words,  "  Live  like  me." 
And  he  reasoned  out  that  it  was  necessary,  as  his 
father  had  done,  to  put  to  profit  the  estate  which  his  father 
gave  him.  And  he  began  to  ask  his  father  how  to  do 
this  or  that,  but  his  father  made  no  reply  to  him.  Then 
the  son  thought  that  his  father  was  afraid  to  teU  him, 
and  began  to  take  to  pieces  all  his  father's  things,  in 
order  to  see  for  himself  how  everything  was  done,  and  he 
spoiled  and  ruined  everything  which  he  had  received 
from  his  father,  and  everything  new  which  he  did  was 
all  to  no  profit.  But  he  did  not  want  to  acknowledge 
that  he  had  spoiled  everything,  and  so  he  lived  in  agony, 
telHng  all  that  his  father  had  given  him  nothing,  but  that 
he  had  made  everything  for  himself.  "  We  can  'all  of  us 
do  better  and  better,  and  shall  soon  reach  a  point  when 
everything  will  be  well."  Thus  spoke  the  second  son,  so 
long  as  anything  his  father  had  given  him  was  left  with 
him  ;  but  when  he  had  spent  the  last,  and  he  had  nothing 
to' live  on,  he  laid  hands  on  himself  and  killed  himself. 


THREE    SONS  495 

The  father  gave  just  such  an  estate  to  the  third  son, 
and  told  him  too : 

"  Live  like  me,  and  then  thou  wilt  always  fare  well." 

And  the  third  son,  like  the  first  and  the  second,  was 
glad  to  receive  the  estate,  and  went  away  from  his  father  ; 
but  he  knew  what  had  happened  with  his  elder  brothers 
and  began  to  think  of  what  was  meant  by  the  words, 
"  Live  like  me,  and  thou  wilt  always  prosper." 

The  eldest  brother  had  thought  that  to  live  like  the 
father  meant  to  live  for  his  own  pleasure,  and  he  squan- 
dered everytiiing,  and  was  ruined. 

The  second  brother  had  thought  that  to  live  like  his 
father  meant  for  him  to  do  everything  which  his  father 
had  done,  and  he,  too,  came  to  despair.  "VST] at,  then,  is 
meant  by  living  hke  the  father  ? 

And  he  began  to  recall  everything  he  knew  about  his 
father.  And  no  matter  how  much  he  thought,  he  could 
not  think  of  anything  else  about  his  father  except  that 
formerly  there  had  been  nothing,  not  even  himself,  and 
that  his  father  had  begotten,  brought  up,  and  educated 
him,  and  had  taught  and  given  him  everything  good,  and 
had  said,  "  Live  like  me,  and  thou  wilt  always  prosper." 
Even  thus  his  father  had  done  with  his  brothers.  And 
no  matter  how  much  he  thought,  he  could  not  think  of 
anything  else  about  his  father,  except  that  his  father  had 
done  good  to  him  and  to  his  brothers. 

And  then  he  comprehended  what  these  words  meant. 
He  understood  that  to  live  like  the  father  meant  to  do 
what  he  was  doing,  to  do  good  to  men.  And  when  he 
thought  of  this,  his  father  was  already  near  him,  and 
said : 

"  Here  we  are  again  together,  and  thou  wilt  always  fare 
well.  Go  to  thy  brother  and  to  all  of  my  children,  and 
tell  them  what  is  meant  by,  '  Live  like  me,'  and  that 
those  who  will  live  like  me  will  always  fare  well." 

And   the   third   son  went  and  told  everything  to  his 


496  THREE    SONS 

brother,  and  since  then  all  the  children,  in  receiving  their 
estate  from  their  father,  have  not  rejoiced  because  they 
have  a  large  estate,  but  because  they  can  live  like  the 
father,  and  vs^ill  always  fare  well. 

The  father  is  God  ;  His  sons  are  men ;  the  estate  is  life. 
Men  think  that  they  can  live  alone  without  God. 

Some  of  these  men  think  that  their  life  is  given  to 
them  in  order  to  rejoice  in  this  life.  They  rejoice  and 
waste  this  life,  and  when  the  time  comes  to  die,  they  do 
not  understand  why  such  life  was  given  to  them,  since 
its  joys  end  in  suffering  and  death.  And  these  men  die, 
cursing  God  and  calling  Him  evil,  and  depart  from  God. 

This  is  the  first  son. 

Other  men  think  that  life  is  given  to  them  in  order 
that  they  may  understand  how  it  is  made,  and  in  order 
that  they  may  make  it  better  than  what  is  given  them  by 
God.  And  they  struggle  over  it,  to  make  another,  a  better 
life.  But,  in  improving  this  life,  they  ruin  it,  and  thus 
deprive  themselves  of  life. 

Other  people  say : 

"  Everything  we  know  of  God  is  that  He  gives  the 
good  to  men  and  commands  them  to  do  the  same,  and  so 
let  us  do  the  same  that  He  does,  —  good  to  men." 

And  the  moment  they  begin  to  do  so,  God  Himself 
comes  to  them,  and  says : 

"  This  is  precisely  what  I  wanted.  Do  with  me  what 
I  do,  and  as  I  live,  so  shall  you  live." 


LABOURER    EMELYAN    AND 
THE    EMPTY    DRUM 

A    Fairy-Tale 
189a 


LABOURER  EMELYAN  AND 
THE    EMPTY    DRUM' 


Emelyan  was  working  for  a  master.  One  day  he  was 
walking  over  the  field,  to  his  work,  when  a  frog  jumped 
up  before  him :  he  almost  stepped  on  it.  Eraelyan 
stepped  over  it.  Suddenly  he  heard  some  one  calling 
him  from  behind.  He  looked  around,  and  saw  there 
standing  a  beautiful  maiden,  and  she  said  to  him: 

"  Emelyan,  why  do  you  not  get  married  ? " 

"  How  can  I  marry,  pretty  maid  ?  All  I  have  is  what 
I  carry  with  me,  and  no  one  will  have  me." 

And  the  maiden  said : 

"  Take  me  for  a  wife ! " 

Emelyan  took  a  hking  to  the  maiden. 

"  I  would  gladly  marry  you,"  he  said,  "  but  where  shall 
we  live  ? " 

"  We  shall  think  of  that,"  said  the  maiden.  "  If  only 
we  work  much  and  sleep  little,  we  shall  be  clothed  and 
fed  anywhere." 

"  Very  well,"  he  said,  "  let  us  get  married  !  Whither 
shall  we  go?" 

"  Let  us  go  to  the  city." 

Emelyan  went  with  the  maiden  to  the  city.  She  took 
him  to  a  small  house  at  the  edge  of  the  city,  and  they 
were  married,  and  began  to  live. 

1 A  popular  tale,  created  along  the  Vdlga  in  the  remote  past,  and 
reconstructed  by  Tolstoy. 

499 


600  LABOURER   EMELYAN 

One  day  the  king  drove  beyond  the  city.  As  he  passed 
by  Emelyan's  house,  his  wife  came  out  to  look  at  the 
king.     The  king  saw  her,  and  marvelled : 

"  Where  was  such  a  beauty  bom  ?  " 

The  king  stopped  his  carriage,  and  called  up  Emelyan's 
wife,  and  began  to  ask  her : 

"  Who  are  you  ? " 

"  I  am  the  wife  of  Peasant  Emely^n,"  she  said. 

"  Why  have  you,  who  are  such  a  beauty,  married  a 
peasant  ?  "  he  said.     "  You  ought  to  be  a  queen." 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  words,"  she  said.  "  I  am 
satisfied  with  a  peasant." 

The  king  spoke  with  her,  and  drove  on.  He  returned 
to  his  palace.  He  could  not  forget  Emelyan's  wife.  He 
could  not  sleep  the  whole  night  long,  thinking  all  the 
time  how  he  might  take  Emelyan's  wife  away.  He  could 
not  think  how  it  could  be  done.  He  called  his  servants, 
and  commanded  them  to  think  it  out.  And  the  servants 
of  the  king  said  to  him  : 

"  Take  Emelyan  into  your  palace  to  work  for  you.  We 
will  kill  him  with  work,  and  his  wife  will  be  left  a 
widow,  then  you  can  take  her." 

So  the  king  did :  he  sent  for  Emelyan,  commanding 
him  to  be  a  janitor  in  his  palace,  and  to  live  in  the  palace 
with  his  wife. 

The  messengers  went  to  Emelyan,  and  told  him  so. 
His  wife  said  : 

"  Why  not  ?  Go  !  Work  in  the  daytime,  and  come  to 
me  in  the  night ! " 

Emelyan  went.  When  he  came  to  the  palace,  the 
king's  steward  asked  him  : 

"  Why  did  you  come  by  yourself,  without  your  wife  ? " 

"  Why  should  I  bring  her  ?  She  has  a  house  of  her 
own." 

They  gave  Emelyan  work  enough  for  two  to  do. 
Emelyan  took  hold  of  the  work,  thinking  he  would  never 


LABOURER    EMELTAN  501 

finish  it ;  but,  behold,  he  finished  it  before  night.  When 
the  steward  saw  that  he  got  through  with  it,  he  gave  him 
for  the  next  day  enough  for  four  to  do.  Emelyan  went 
home ;  but  at  his  home  everything  was  swept  clean  and 
tidied  :  the  fire  was  made  in  the  oven,  and  everything  was 
baked  and  cooled.  His  wife  was  sitting  at  the  table, 
sewing  at  something,  and  waiting  for  her  husband.  She 
met  her  husband,  got  the  supper  ready,  gave  him  to  eat 
and  to  drink,  and  began  to  ask  him  about  his  work, 

"  Things  are  bad,"  he  said.  "  They  give  me  tasks  be- 
yond my  strength :  they  will  kill  me  with  work." 

"  Do  not  think  of  work,"  she  said.  "  Look  neither  for- 
ward nor  backward,  whether  you  have  done  much,  or 
whether  much  is  left  to  do.  Work,  and  everything  will 
come  out  in  proper  time." 

Emelyan  lay  down  to  sleep.  In  the  morning  he  went 
out  again.  He  took  liold  of  the  work,  and  did  not  look  back 
once.  Behold,  in  the  evening  everything  was  done,  and 
he  went  home  to  sleep,  while  it  was  yet  light.  They 
kept  increasing  his  task,  but  he  finished  his  work  in  time, 
and  went  home  to  sleep. 

A  week  passed.  The  king's  servants  saw  that  they 
could  not  wear  out  Emelyan  with  hard  labour,  and  so 
began  to  give  him  cunning  tasks ;  but  they  could  not 
wear  him  out  with  these,  either.  No  matter  what  they 
gave  him  to  do,  whether  carpenter's,  or  mason's,  or 
thatcher's  work,  he  finished  all  by  the  set  time,  and  went 
home  to  his  wife  to  sleep.  Another  week  passed.  The 
king  called  up  his  servants,  and  said  to  them : 

"  Do  I  feed  you  for  nothing  ?  Two  weeks  have  passed, 
and  I  do  not  see  anything  from  you.  You  were  going  to 
kill  Emelyan  wdth  work,  and  I  see  each  day  through  the 
window  that  he  goes  home  singing  songs.  Do  you  mean 
to  make  fun  of  me  ? " 

The  king's  servants  began  to  justify  themselves. 

"  We  have  tried  with  all  our  might  and  main  to  wear 


502  LABOURER   EMELTAN 

him  out,  first  of  all,  with  menial  labour,  but  we  could  not 
vanquish  him.  No  matter  what  we  gave  him  to  do,  he 
did,  as  though  sweeping  it  clean,  and  feeling  no  weariness. 
We  began  to  give  him  cunning  work  to  do,  thinking  that 
he  would  not  have  sense  enough,  and  still  we  could  not 
overcome  him.  Where  does  it  all  come  from  ?  He  un- 
derstands everything,  and  does  everything.  Either  there 
is  some  witchery  in  him,  or  in  his  wife.  We  are  our- 
selves tired  of  him.  We  want  to  give  him  now  such 
work  to  do  that  he  will  be  unable  to  finish  it.  We  have 
decided  to  ask  him  to  build  a  cathedral  iu  one  day.  Call 
in  Emelyan,  and  command  him  in  one  day  to  build  a 
cathedral  opposite  the  palace.  And  if  he  does  not  build 
it,  we  can  chop  off  his  head  for  his  disobedience." 

The  king  sent  for  Emelyan. 

"  Here  is  my  command,"  he  said  :  "  Build  me  a  new 
cathedral  opposite  the  palace,  on  the  square.  It  has  to 
be  ready  by  to-morrow  evening.  If  you  get  it  built,  I 
shall  reward  you ;  but  if  you  do  not,  I  shall  put  you  to 
death." 

When  Emelyan  had  heard  the  king's  words,  he  turned 
around  and  went  home. 

"  Well,"  he  thought,  "  now  my  end  has  come." 

He  came  to  his  wife  and  said : 

"  Wife,  get  ready !  you  must  run  away  wherever  you 
can,  or  else  you  will  lose  your  life." 

"  What  frightens  you  so,"  she  said,  "  that  you  want  to 
run  ? " 

"  How  can  I  help  being  frightened  ?  The  king  has 
commanded  me  to  build  a  cathedral  to-morrow,  in  one 
day.  If  I  do  not  get  it  built,  he  threatens  to  chop  off  my 
head.     There  is  nothing  left  to  do  but  run  away." 

His  wife  did  not  accept  his  words. 

"  The  king  has  many  soldiers,  and  he  will  catch  you 
anywhere.  You  cannot  run  away  from  him.  So  long  as 
you  have  strength  you  must  obey  him." 


LABOURER    EMELYAN  503 

"  But  how  shall  I  obey,  if  I  have  not  the  strength  ? " 

"  Never  mind,  husband.  Do  not  trouble  yourseK  :  eat 
your  supper  and  lie  do^\^l  to  sleep;  get  up  early  in  the 
morning,  and  all  will  go  well." 

Emelyan  lay  down  to  sleep ;  his  wife  woke  him  up. 

"  Go,"  she  said,  "  and  finish  the  cathedral  as  quickly  as 
you  can.  Here  are  nails  and  a  hammer.  You  will  find 
about  a  day's  work  left  to  do." 

Emelyan  went  into  the  city,  and  there,  indeed,  the 
cathedral  was  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  square,  just 
a  little  unfinished.  Emelyan.  began  to  put  on  the  last 
touches,  wherever  necessary,  and  by  evening  he  had 
everything  done.  The  king  woke  up,  looked  out  of  the 
palace,  and,  behold,  there  was  the  cathedral,  and  Emelyan 
was  walking  to  and  fro,  driving  in  nails  here  and  there. 
The  king  was  not  at  all  pleased  with  the  cathedral :  he 
was  angry,  because  he  had  no  reason  to  put  him  to  death, 
and  could  not  take  his  wife  from  him.  The  king  again 
called  his  servants. 

"  Emelyan  has  done  tliis  task,  too,  and  I  have  no  cause 
to  kill  him.  This  task  was  not  big  enough  for  him.  You 
must  invent  something  more  cunning.  Think  out  some- 
thing, or  else  I  will  have  you  put  to  death  before  him." 

The  servants  thought  out  to  have  Emelyan  construct  a 
river  around  the  palace,  so  that  ships  might  sail  on  it. 
The  king  called  Emelyan,  and  commanded  him  to  do  a 
new  task. 

"  If  you  were  able  to  build  a  cathedral  in  one  night," 
he  said,  "  you  are  also  able  to  do  this  work :  everything 
is  to  be  ready  by  to-morrcw  as  I  command.  If  it  is  not 
ready,  I  shall  have  your  head  cut  off." 

Emelyan  was  grieved  more  than  ever,  and  came  home 
gloomy  to  his  wife. 

"  Why  are  you  so  sad  ?  Has  the  king  commanded  you 
to  do  something  new  ? " 

Emelyan  told  her. 


604  LABOURER  EMELYAN 

"  We  must  run  away." 

But  his  wife  said  : 

"  You  cannot  run  away  from  the  soldiers,  —  they  will 
catch  you  anywhere.     You  must  obey." 

"  But  how  can  I  obey  ? " 

"  Come  now,  come  now,  husband,  do  not  worry  !  Eat 
your  supper,  and  lie  down  to  sleep.  Get  up  as  early  as 
possible,  and  all  will  be  in  good  time." 

Emelyan  lay  down  to  sleep.  His  wife  woke  him  up  in 
the  morning. 

"Go  tc  the  castle,"  she  said.  "Everything  is  ready. 
Near  the  harbour,  opposite  the  palace,  a  little  mound  is 
left :  so  take  a  spade  and  even  it  up." 

Emelyan  went.  When  he  came  to  the  city  he  saw  a 
river  round  about  the  palace,  and  the  ships  were  sailing 
upon  it.  Emelyan  went  up  to  the  harbour,  opposite  the 
palace,  and  he  saw  an  uneven  place,  and  evened  it  up. 

The  king  awoke,  and  he  saw  a  river  where  there  had 
been  none  before ;  ships  were  sailing  on  the  river,  and 
Emelyan  was  evening  up  a  mound  with  a  spade.  The 
king  was  frightened  and  not  at  all  glad  of  the  river  and 
the  ships,  but  annoyed,  because  he  could  not  put  Emelyan 
to  death.  He  thought  to  himself :  "  There  is  no  task 
which  he  cannot  do.  What  shall  I  do  ? "  He  called  up 
his  servants  and  took  counsel  with  them. 

"  Think  out  a  task,"  he  said,  "  which  will  be  beyond 
Emelyan ;  for  so  far,  no  matter  what  we  have  given  him 
to  do,  he  has  done,  and  I  am  not  able  to  get  his  wife  from 
him." 

The  courtiers  thought  and  thought,  and  finally  thought 
out  something.     They  came  to  the  king  and  said : 

"  Emelyan  ought  to  be  called  and  told  this :  '  Go  there, 
know  not  where,  and  bring  that,  know  not  what!'  He 
will  not  be  able  to  get  away  this  time,  for  wherever  he 
may  go,  you  will  say  that  he  did  not  go  where  it  was 
necessary,  and  no  matter  what  he  may  bring,  you  will  say 


LABOUREK    EMELYAN  505 

that  he  did  not  bring  the  right  thing.  Then  you  can  put 
him  to  death  and  take  his  wife." 

The  king  was  happy. 

"  This  is  a  clever  thought  of  yours,"  he  said. 

The  king  sent  for  Emelyan,  and  said  to  him : 

"  Go  there,  know  not  where,  bring  that,  know  not 
what.  If  you  do  not  bring  it,  I  shall  have  your  head 
cut  off." 

Emelyan  came  to  his  wife,  and  told  her  what  the  king 
had  said  to  him.     The  wife  thought  awhile. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  "  they  have  instructed  the  king 
cleverly.     Now  we  must  do  it  well." 

His  wife  sat  awhile  thinking,  and  then  she  said  to  her 
husband : 

"  You  will  have  to  go  a  long  distance,  —  to  our  grand- 
mother, the  ancient  peasant,  soldier  mother, —  and  you 
must  ask  her  favour.  If  you  get  anything  from  her,  go 
straight  to  the  palace,  and  I  will  be  there.  Now  I  cannot 
get  out  of  their  hands.  They  will  take  me  by  force,  but 
it  will  not  be  for  long.  If  you  do  everything  as  the 
grandmother  tells  you  to,  you  will  redeem  me  soon." 

The  wife  got  her  husband  ready,  and  gave  him  a  wallet 
and  a  spindle. 

"  Give  this  to  her,"  she  said.  "  By  this  will  she  tell 
that  you  are  my  husband." 

She  showed  him  the  road.  Emelyan  went  away. 
When  he  came  outside  the  city,  he  saw  them  teacliing 
the  soldiers.  He  stood  still  for  awhile,  watching  them. 
After  the  soldiers  had  practised,  they  sat  down  to  rest 
themselves.     Emelyan  went  up  to  them,  and  asked : 

"  Brothers,  can  you  tell  me  how  to  go  there,  know  not 
where,  and  how  to  bring  that,  know  not  what  ? " 

When  the  soldiers  heard  this,  they  marvelled. 

"  Who  sent  you  to  find  that  ? "  they  asked. 

"  The  king,"  he  said. 

"  We  ourselves,"  they  said,  "  ever  since  we  have  been 


506  LABOURER  EMELYAN 

made  soldiers,  have  been  going  there,  know  not  where, 
and  cannot  get  there,  and  have  been  seeking  that,  know 
not  what,  and  cannot  find  it.     We  cannot  help  you." 

Emelyan  sat  awhile  with  the  soldiers,  and  went  on. 
He  walked  and  walked,  and  came  to  a  forest.  In  the 
forest  there  was  a  hut.  In  the  hut  sat  an  old  woman, — 
the  peasant,  soldier  mother,  —  spinning  at  the  wheel. 
She  was  weeping  and  did  not  moisten  her  fingers  with 
her  spittle  in  her  mouth,  but  with  the  tears  in  her  eyes. 
When  the  old  woman  saw  Emelyan,  she  called  out  to 
him: 

"  What  did  you  come  here  for  ? " 

Emelyan  gave  her  the  spindle,  and  said  that  his  wife 
had  sent  him  to  her.  The  old  woman  softened  at  once, 
and  began  to  put  questions  to  him.  And  Emelyan  told 
her  all  about  his  life,  how  he  had  married  the  maiden ; 
how  he  had  gone  to  the  city  to  live  ;  how  he  had  been 
made  a  janitor ;  how  he  had  served  in  the  palace ;  how 
he  had  built  the  cathedral  and  had  made  a  river  with  its 
ships,  and  how  the  king  had  commanded  him  to  go  there, 
know  not  where,  and  bring  that,  know  not  what. 

The  old  woman  listened  to  him  and  stopped  weeping. 
She  began  to  mumble  to  herself  : 

"  The  time  has  evidently  come.  Very  well,"  she  said, 
"  sit  down,  my  son,  and  have  something  to  eat." 

Emelyan  had  something  to  eat,  and  the  old  woman 
said  to  him : 

"  Here  you  have  a  ball  of  twine  :  roll  it  before  you,  and 
follow  it,  wherever  it  rolls.  It  will  roll  far  away,  to  the 
very  sea.  You  will  come  to  the  sea,  and  there  you  will 
see  a  large  city.  Go  into  the  city,  and  ask  them  in  the 
outer  house  to  let  you  stay  there  overnight.  Then  look 
for  what  you  need  !  " 

"  How  shall  I  know  it,  grandmother  ?" 

"  When  you  see  that  which  people  obey  better  than 
their  parents,  you  have  found  it.     Grasp  it  and  take  it  to 


LABOUKER   EMELYAN  607 

the  king !  When  you  bring  it  to  the  king,  he  will  say- 
to  you  that  you  have  not  brought  the  right  thing ; 
say  then,  '  If  it  is  not  that  I  shall  have  to  break  it,'  and 
strike  the  thing  and  then  take  it  to  the  river,  break  it  to 
pieces,  and  throw  it  into  the  water ;  then  you  will  get 
your  wife  back,  and  you  will  dry  up  my  tears." 

Emelyau  bade  the  old  woman  good-bye,  and  went 
away,  rolling  the  ball  before  him.  He  rolled  it  and 
rolled  it,  and  it  brought  him  to  the  sea.  Near  the  sea 
was  a  large  city.  At  the  edge  of  it  stood  a  large  house. 
Emelyan  asked  the  people  in  the  house  to  let  him  stay  in 
it  overnight,  and  they  let  him.  He  lay  down  to  sleep. 
He  woke  up  early  in  the  morning,  and  heard  the  father 
getting  up  and  waking  his  son,  to  send  him  to  cut  some 
wood.     And  the  son  did  not  obey  him : 

"  It  is  early  yet :  I  shall  have  time  enough  to  do  it." 

He  heard  the  mother  say  on  the  oven: 

"Go,  my  son,  your  father's  bones  are  aching,  —  how 
can  he  go  himself  ?     It  is  time." 

The  son  only  smacked  his  hps,  and  fell  asleep  again. 
The  moment  he  fell  asleep,  there  was  a  thundering  and 
rattling  in  the  street.  The  son  jumped  up,  dressed  him- 
self, and  ran  out  into  the  street.  Emelyan,  too,  jumped 
up  and  ran  after  him,  to  see  what  it  was  that  the  son 
paid  more  attention  to  than  to  his  father  and  his  mother, 
Emelyan  ran  out,  and  saw  a  man  walking  in  the  street, 
carrying  a  round  thing  over  his  belly,  and  striking  it 
with  sticks,  and  it  was  this  that  thundered  so  and  made 
the  son  pay  attention  to  it.  Emelyan  ran  up  to  take  a 
look  at  the  thing.  He  saw  that  it  was  as  round  as  a  vat, 
and  skins  were  stretched  over  both  sides  of  it.  He  asked 
the  people  what  they  called  this  thing. 

"  A  drum,"  they  said. 

"  Is  it  empty  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  they  said. 

Emelyan  wondered  at  the  thing,  and  began  to  ask  the 


508  LABOURER   EMELYAN 

man  to  give  it  to  him.  The  man  would  not  give  it  to 
him.  Emelyan  stopped  aslviug  for  it,  but  followed 
the  drummer.  He  walked  the  whole  day,  and  when  the 
drummer  lay  down  to  sleep,  Emelyan  seized  the  drum, 
and  ran  away  with  it.  He  ran  and  ran  and  came  home 
to  his  city.  He  went  to  see  his  wife,  but  she  was  not  at 
home.  She  had  been  taken  to  the  king  the  next  day. 
Emelyan  went  to  the  palace,  and  had  liimself  announced. 

"  The  man  has  come,"  he  said,  "  who  went  there,  know 
not  where,  and  has  brought  that,  know  not  what." 

He  was  announced  to  the  king.  The  king  sent  word 
to  Emelyan  to  come  the  next  day.  Emelyan  asked  to  be 
announced  once  more  : 

"  I  have  come  this  day,  and  have  brought  what  the 
king  has  commanded.  Let  the  king  come  to  me,  or  else 
will  I  go  in  myself." 

The  king  came  out. 

"  Where  have  you  been  ?  "  he  asked. 

He  told  him  where, 

"  It  is  not  there,"  he  said.  "  And  what  did  you 
bring  ? " 

Emelyan  wanted  to  show  it  to  him,  but  the  king  did 
not  look  at  it. 

"  It  is  not  that,"  he  said. 

"  If  it  is  not  that,"  he  said,  "  I  must  break  it,  and  the 
devil  take  it ! " 

Emelyan  went  out  of  the  palace  with  the  drum,  and 
struck  it.  The  moment  he  struck  it,  tlie  whole  army  of 
the  king  gathered  about  Emelyan.  They  did  not  obey  the 
king,  but  followed  after  Emelyan.  When  the  king  saw 
this,  he  ordered  Emelyan's  wife  brought  out  to  Emelyan, 
and  began  to  ask  him  to  give  him  the  drum. 

"  I  cannot,"  said  Emelyan.  "  I  have  been  commanded 
to  break  it  to  pieces,  and  to  throw  the  pieces  into  the 
river." 

Emelyan  went  with   the  drum  to   the  river,  and  the 


LABOUKER   EMELYAN  509 

soldiers  came  after  him.  At  the  river,  Emelyan  broke 
the  drum  and  smashed  it  to  splinters,  and  threw  them 
into  the  river.  And  all  the  soldiers  rau  away.  But 
Emelyan  took  his  wife  and  went  home  with  her.  After 
that  the  king  stopped  harassing  him,  and  he  began  to 
live  happily,  gaining  what  was  good,  and  losing  what  was 
evil. 


CONTENTS 


* 

PAGE 

Death  of  Ivan  Tlich 3 

The  Power  of  Darkness 

83 

Act  I. 

84 

Act  II 

106 

Variant      .... 

159 

The  Fruits  of  Enlightenment 

187 

Act  I.          .... 

191 

Act  it 

231 

Act  III 

259 

Act  IY 

287 

The  Kreutzer  Sonata    . 

307 

Epilogue  to  the  Kreutzer  Sonata     . 

» 

419 

Ox  the  Relation  between  the  S 

EXES 

437 

THE   DEATH    OF    IVAN   ILICH 

1884-86 


THE   DEATH   OF   IVAN   ILICH 


In  the  large  building  of  the  court  institutions,  during  a 
pause  in  the  case  of  the  Melvinskis,  the  associates  and  the 
prosecuting  attorney  met  in  the  cabinet  of  Ivan  Egorovich 
Sh^bek,  and  started  a  conversation  on  the  famous  Krasov- 
ski  case,  Fedor  Vasilevich  grew  excited,  proving  that  it 
was  not  subject  to  their  jurisdiction.  Ivan  Egorovich 
stuck  to  his  opinion,  while  Peter  Ivanovich,  who  had  not 
entered  into  the  discussion  from  the  start,  took  no  part  in 
it,  and  looked  through  the  Gazette  which  had  been  lianded 
to  him. 

"  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  Ivan  Ilich  is  dead." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?  " 

"  Here,  read  it,"  he  said  to  FMor  Vasilevich,  giving 
him  the  fresh-smelling  number  of  the  newspaper. 

Within  a  black  border  was  the  following  announcement : 
"  Praskovya  Ft^dorovna  Golovin  with  sincere  sorrow  in- 
forms her  relatives  and  acquaintances  of  the  demise  of  her 
beloved  husband,  Ivan  Ilich  Golovin,  associate  member  of 
the  court,  which  took  place  on  February  4th  of  this  year, 
1882.    The  funeral  will  be  on  Friday,  at  one  o'clock  P.  m." 

Ivan  Ilich  was  an  associate  of  the  gentlemen  assembled, 
and  they  all  loved  him.  He  had  been  ill  for  several 
weeks :  it  was  said  that  his  disease  was  incurable.  His 
post  was  left  open  for  him,  but  it  was  rumoured  that  in 

3 


4  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

case  of  his  death  Aleksy^ev  would  probably  be  appomted 
iu  his  place,  and  that  Vinnikov  or  Shtabel  would  get 
Aleksy^ev's  place.  Therefore,  upon  hearing  about  Ivan 
Ilich's  death,  the  first  thought  of  every  one  of  the  gen- 
tlemen collected  in  the  cabinet  was  as  to  the  signifi- 
cance which  this  death  might  have  on  the  changes  or 
promotions  of  the  associates  themselves  or  of  their  friends. 

"  Now  I  shall  no  doubt  get  Shtabel's  place  or  Vinni- 
kov's,"  thought  F(^dor  Vasilevich.  "  I  was  promised  that 
long  ago,  and  this  promotion  will  mean  for  me  eight  hun- 
dred roubles  increase,  in  addition  to  the  chancery." 

"  I  must  now  ask  for  the  transfer  of  my  brother-in-law 
from  Kaluga,"  thought  Peter  Ivanovich.  "  My  wife  will 
be  very  glad.  She  will  no  longer  be  able  to  say  that  I 
am  not  doing  anything  for  her  relatives." 

"  I  never  thought  he  would  get  up  again,"  Peter  Ivano- 
vich said,  aloud.     "  I  am  sorry." 

"  What  was  the  matter  with  him,  anyway  ? " 

"  The  doctors  could  not  make  it  out.  That  is,  they  did, 
but  each  of  them  differently.  When  I  saw  him  the  last 
time,  I  thought  he  was  getting  better." 

"  And  here  I  have  not  called  on  him  since  the  holidays. 
I  was  meaning  to  all  the  time." 

"  Well,  did  he  have  any  estate  ?  " 

"  I  think  his  wife  has  a  little  something,  but  nothing 
of  any  consequence." 

"  Yes,  I  shall  have  to  go  there ;  but  they  have  been 
living  a  terrible  distance  away." 

"  That  is,  from  your  house.  From  your  house  every- 
thing is  a  distance  away." 

"  You  really  cannot  forgive  me  for  living  on  the  other 
side  of  the  river,"  Peter  Ivanovich  said,  smiling  at  Sh^bek. 
And  they  began  to  talk  of  the  extent  of  the  city  distances, 
and  went  back  to  the  court  session. 

In  addition  to  the  reflections  evoked  in  each  of  them  by 
this  death  about  the  transpositions  and  possible  changes 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  5 

in  the  service  likely  to  happen  in  consequence  of  it,  the 
very  fact  of  the  death  of  a  close  friend  evoked  in  all  those 
who  heard  of  it,  as  it  always  does,  a  feeling  of  joy  because 
it  was  Ivan  Ilich  who  had  died  and  not  they. 

"  How  is  this  ?  It  is  he  who  is  dead,  and  not  I,"  each 
of  them  thought  or  felt. 

But  the  close  acquaintances,  Ivan  Ilich's  so-called 
friends,  involuntarily  thought  also  of  this,  that  now  they 
would  have  to  perform  some  very  tedious  duties  of  pro- 
priety and  go  to  the  mass  and  call  on  the  widow  to  express 
their  condolence. 

His  nearest  friends  were  F(5dor  Vasilevich  and  Peter 
Ivanovich. 

Peter  Ivanovich  had  been  his  schoolmate  while  studying 
law,  and  considered  himself  under  obligation  to  Ivan  Ilich. 

At  dinner  Peter  Ivanovich  gave  his  wife  the  news  of 
Ivan  Ilich's  death,  and  his  reflections  as  to  the  possibility 
of  his  brother-in-law's  transfer  to  their  circuit,  and,  with- 
out dying  down  to  rest  himself,  he  put  on  his  dress  coat 
and  drove  to  Ivan  Ilich's  house. 

At  the  entrance  to  Ivan  Ilich's  apartments  stood  a  car- 
riage and  two  cabs.  Down-stairs,  in  the  antechamber, 
near  the  hat-rack,  and  leaning  against  the  wall,  stood  a 
tinselled  coffin-lid  with  its  tassels  and  burnished  galloons. 
Two  ladies  in  black  were  taking  off  their  fur  coats.  One 
of  them,  Ivan  Ilich's  sister,  he  knew;  the  other  was  a 
stranger  to  him.  Peter  Ivanovich's  friend,  Schwarz,  was 
coming  down-stairs,  and,  seeing  the  newcomer  from  the 
upper  step,  he  stopped  and  winked  to  him,  as  if  to  say : 
"Ivan  Ilich  has  managed  things  stupidly;  you  and  I 
fixed  things  better." 

Schwarz's  face  with  its  English  side-whiskers  and  his 
whole  lean  figure  in  the  dress  coat  had,  as  always,  an 
elegant  solemnity  about  them,  and  this  solemnity,  which 
always  contradicted  Schwarz's  character  of  playfulness, 
had  here  its  particular  salt.     So  Peter  Ivanovich  thought. 


6  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

Peter  Ivanovich  allowed  the  ladies  to  precede  him,  and 
followed  them  up  the  staircase.  Schwarz  did  not  start  to 
go  down,  but  stopped  up-stairs.  Peter  Ivanovich  knew 
why  he  did  so :  he  evidently  wanted  to  make  an  engage- 
ment to  play  a  game  of  vint  that  day.  The  ladies  went 
up-stairs  to  see  the  widow,  and  Schwarz,  with  seriously 
compressed,  strong  lips  and  playful  glance,  with  a  motion 
of  his  brows  showed  Peter  Ivanovich  to  the  right,  to  the 
room  where  the  body  lay. 

Peter  Ivanovich  entered,  as  is  always  the  case,  per- 
plexed as  to  what  he  would  have  to  do.  One  thing  he 
knew,  and  that  was  that  under  such  circumstances  it 
would  never  do  any  harm  to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross. 
But  he  was  not  quite  sure  whether  he  ought  also  to  make 
obeisances,  and  so  he  chose  the  middle  way :  upon  enter- 
ing the  room,  he  began  to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  and 
acted  as  though  he  were  bowing.  At  the  same  time,  as 
much  as  the  motion  of  his  hands  and  of  his  head  per- 
mitted it,  he  surveyed  the  room.  Two  young  men,  jone 
of  them  a  gymnasiast,  —  he  thought  they  were  nephews, 
—  were  leaving  the  room,  making  the  sign  of  the  cross. 
An  old  woman  stood  motionless  and  a  lady  with  queerly 
raised  brows  was  telling  her  something  in  a  whisper.  A 
sexton,  in  a  Prince  Albert,  a  wide-awake,  determined  man, 
was  reading  something  in  a  loud  voice  with  an  expression 
which  excluded  every  contradiction  ;  Gerasim,  a  peasant 
of  the  buffet-room,  was  with  light  steps  strewing  some- 
thing on  the  floor,  in  front  of  Peter  Ivanovich.  As  Peter 
Ivanovich  saw  this,  he  at  once  caught  the  light  odour  of 
the  decomposing  body. 

During  his  last  call  on  Ivan  Ilich,  Peter  Ivanovich  had 
seen  this  peasant  in  the  cabinet :  he  had  been  performing 
the  duty  of  a  nurse,  and  Ivan  Ilich  was  particularly  fond 
of  him.  Peter  Ivanovich  kept  making  the  sign  of  the 
cross  and  slightly  inclined  his  head  in  a  central  direction 
between  the  coffin,  the  sexton,  and  the  images  on  the 


THE    DEATH   OF    IVAN   ILICH  7 

table  in  the  corner  of  the  room.  Afterward,  when  this 
motion  of  making  the  sign  of  the  cross  with  his  hand 
appeared  to  him  to  have  lasted  long  enough,  he  stopped 
and  began  to  look  at  the  corpse. 

The  dead  man  was  lying,  as  all  dead  men  lie,  quite 
heavily,  in  corpse-like  fashion  sinking  with  the  stark 
members  of  his  body  in  the  bedding  of  the  coffin,  with 
an  eternally  bent  head  on  a  pillow,  and  displayed,  as 
corpses  always  do,  his  yellow,  waxen  brow  with  bare  spots 
over  his  sunken  temples,  and  a  towering  nose  which 
seemed  to  be  pressing  against  the  upper  lip.  He  was 
very  much  changed  and  much  thinner  than  when  Peter 
Ivanovich  had  seen  him  the  last  time,  but,  as  is  the  case  with 
all  corpses,  his  face  was  more  beautiful  and,  above  all, 
more  significant  than  that  of  a  hving  man.  On  his  face 
there  was  an  expression  of  this,  that  what  was  necessary 
to  do  had  been  done,  and  done  correctly.  Besides,  in  this 
expression  there  was  also  a  rebuke  or  reminder  to  the 
li\ing. 

This  reminder  seemed  to  Peter  Ivanovich  out  of  place, 
or,  at  least,  having  no  reference  to  him.  For  some  reason 
he  felt  ill  at  ease,  and  so  hastened  to  cross  himself  again 
and,  as  it  appeared  to  him,  too  precipitously  and  out  of 
keeping  with  the  proprieties,  turned  around  and  walked 
toward  the  door. 

Schwarz  was  waiting  for  him  in  a  middle  room,  spread- 
ing his  legs  wide,  and  with  both  his  hands  playing  behind 
his  back  with  his  silk  hat.  One  glance  at  Schwarz's  play- 
ful, natty,  and  elegant  figure  refreshed  Peter  Ivanovich. 
Peter  Ivanovich  understood  that  he,  Schwarz,  was  stand- 
ing above  such  things,  and  did  not  surrender  himself  to 
crushing  impressions.  His  very  glance  said :  the  inci- 
dent of  the  mass  for  Ivan  Ilich  can  by  no  means  serve  as 
a  sufficient  reason  for  declaring  the  order  of  the  session 
disturbed,  that  is,  that  nothing  could  keep  him  that  very 
evening  from  cHcking  with  the  deck  of  cards  after  break- 


8  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

ing  the  seal,  while  the  lackey  would  place  f(3ur  fresh 
candles  on  the  table ;  altogether  there  was  no  cause  for 
supposing  that  this  incident  could  keep  them  from  passing 
an  agreeable  evening.  Indeed,  he  said  so  in  a  whisper  to 
Peter  Ivauovich  as  he  passed  by,  proposing  that  they  meet 
for  the  game  at  the  house  of  F^dor  Vasilevich.  But  it 
was  apparently  not  Peter  Ivanovich's  fate  to  have  a  game 
of  vint  that  evening.  Praskovya  F^dorovna,  an  under- 
sized, fat  woman,  who,  in  spite  of  all  efforts  to  the 
contrary,  had  been  expanding  all  the  time  downward  from 
the  shoulders,  dressed  in  black,  with  her  head  covered 
with  lace,  and  with  the  same  upturned  brows  as  those 
of  the  lady  who  was  standing  at  the  coffin,  came  out  of 
her  apartments  with  other  ladies  and,  taking  them  to  the 
door  of  the  room  where  the  dead  man  lay,  said :  "  The 
mass  will  be  read  at  once.     Pass  in." 

Schwarz  made  an  indefinite  bow  and  stopped,  evidently 
neither  accepting  nor  declining  the  offer.  When  Pras- 
kovya Fedorovua  recognized  Peter  Ivauovich,  she  sighed, 
went  up  close  to  him,  took  his  hand,  and  said  :  "  I  know 
that  you  were  a  true  friend  to  Ivan  Ilich,"  and  looked  at 
him,  expecting  from  him  an  action  which  would  corre- 
spond to  these  words.  Peter  Ivauovich  knew  that,  as  it 
was  necessary  there  to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross,  so  here 
it  was  necessary  to  press  her  hand,  to  sigh,  and  to  say : 
"  Believe  me  !  "  And  so  he  did.  Having  done  it,  he  felt 
that  the  desired  result  was  achieved :  both  he  and  she 
were  touched. 

"  Come  with  me  :  before  it  begins  there,  I  have  to  talk 
with  you,"  said  the  widow.     "  Give  me  your  arm." 

Peter  Ivauovich  gave  her  his  arm,  and  they  went  to  the 
inner  apartments,  past  Schwarz,  v/ho  gave  Ivan  Ilich  a 
sad  wink. 

"  There  goes  the  vint !  You  must  not  be  angry  with 
us  if  we  choose  another  partner.  If  you  get  off,  we  may 
play  a  five-handed  game,"  said  his  playful  glance. 


THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN    ILICH  \f 

Peter  Ivanovich  sighed  more  deeply  and  more  sadly 
still,  and  Praskovya  F(^dorovna  pressed  his  haud  grate- 
fully. Upon  entering  her  drawing-room,  which  was 
papered  with  pink  cretonne  and  was  illuminated  by  a 
dim  lamp,  they  sat  down  at  the  table,  —  she  on  a  divan, 
and  Peter  Ivanovich  on  a  pouffe  with  crushed  springs  and 
unevenly  yielding  seat.  Praskovya  F^dorovna  was  on 
the  point  of  cautioning  him  and  asking  him  to  take 
another  seat,  but  found  this  cautiouiug  incompatible  with 
her  present  condition,  and  so  changed  her  mind. 

Seating  himself  on  this  pouffe,  Peter  Ivanovich  recalled 
how  Ivan  Ilich  had  appointed  this  room  and  had  con- 
sulted him  in  regard  to  this  very  pink  cretonne  with  its 
green  leaves.  As  the  widow,  on  her  way  to  seat  herself, 
passed  by  the  table  (the  drawing-room  was  altogether  too 
full  of  trifles  and  of  furniture),  the  black  lace  of  her  black 
mantilla  caught  on  the  carving  of  the  table.  Peter  Ivano- 
vich raised  himself  in  order  to  disentangle  it,  and  the 
liberated  pouffe  began  to  agitate  under  him  and  to  push 
him.  The  widow  began  to  free  her  lace  herself,  and  Peter 
Ivanovich  sat  down  again,  choking  the  riotous  pouffe. 
But  the  widow  did  not  free  the  lace  entirely,  and  Peter 
Ivanovich  raised  himself  again,  and  again  the  pouffe  be- 
came agitated  and  even  chcked.  When  all  this  was 
ended,  she  took  out  her  clean  cambric  handkerchief  and 
began  to  weep.  But  Peter  Ivanovich  was  cooled  off  by 
the  episode  with  the  lace  and  by  the  struggle  with  the 
pouffe,  and  sat  scowling.  This  awkward  situation  was 
interrupted  by  Sokolov,  Ivan  Ilich's  butler,  who  came  to 
report  that  the  lot  in  the  cemetery  which  Praskovya 
F^dorovna  had  chosen  would  cost  two  hundred  roubles. 
She  stopped  weeping  and,  looking  at  Peter  Ivanovich  with 
the  glance  of  a  victim,  said  in  French  that  it  was  very 
hard  for  lier.  Peter  Ivanovich  made  a  silent  sign,  which 
expressed  unquestionable  assurance  that  that  could  not  be 
otherwise. 


10  THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN    ILICH 

«  Do  smoke,  if  you  please,"  she  said,  in  a  magnanimous 
and  at  the  same  time  crushed  voice,  and  proceeded  to 
busy  herself  with  Sokolov  concerning  the  price  of  the  lot. 
Peter  Ivanovich  heard,  while  starting  to  smoke,  how  she 
inquired  very  circumstantially  about  the  different  prices 
of  the  land  and  settled  on  the  lot  which  she  was  going  to 
take.  Having  finished  about  the  lot,  she  also  made  her 
arrangements  about  the  singers.     Sokolov  went  away. 

"  I  do  everything  myself,"  she  said  to  Peter  Ivanovich, 
pushing  aside  the  albums  which  were  lying  on  the  ta- 
ble, and,  observing  that  the  ashes  were  threatening  the 
table,  she  without  delay  moved  up  the  ash-tray  to  Peter 
Ivanovich,  and  said :  "  I  consider  it  a  bit  of  hypocrisy  to 
assure  people  that  my  grief  prevents  me  from  attending 
to  practical  matters.  On  the  contrary,  if  there  is  any- 
thing which  can,  not  console,  but  distract  me,  it  is  the 
cares  concerning  him."  She  again  drew  out  her  handker- 
chief, as  though  getting  ready  to  cry,  and  suddenly,  as 
though  overcoming  herself,  she  shook  herself,  and  began 
to  speak  calmly.  "  But  I  want  to  ask  you  about  a  certain 
matter." 

Peter  Ivanovich  made  a  bow,  without  permitting  the 
springs  of  the  pouffe,  which  began  to  stir  under  him,  to 
get  away. 

"  The  last  three  days  he  suffered  terribly." 

"  Suffered  terribly  ?  "  asked  Peter  Ivanovich. 

"  Oh,  terribly  !  The  last  minutes,  nay  hours,  he  never 
stopped  crying.  It  was  unbearable.  I  cannot  understand 
how  I  stood  it ;  you  could  hear  him  three  rooms  off.  Oh, 
what  I  have  endured  ! " 

"  And  was  he  really  in  his  right  mind  ? "  asked  Peter 
Ivanovich. 

"  Yes,"  she  whispered,  "  to  the  last  minute.  He  bade 
us  good-bye  within  fifteen  minutes  of  his  death,  and  also 
asked  us  to  take  Volodya  away." 

The  thought  of  the  suffering  of  this  man,  whom  he  had 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  11 

known  so  closely,  at  first  as  a  merry  boy,  as  his  school- 
mate, and  later,  when  he  was  grown,  as  his  partner, 
suddenly  terrified  him,  in  spite  of  the  disagreeable  con- 
sciousness of  his  hypocrisy  and  of  that  of  the  woman.  He 
again  saw  that  brow  and  that  nose  which  pressed  against 
the  hp,  and  he  felt  terribly  for  himself. 

"  Three  days  of  frightful  suffering,  and  death.  Why, 
this  may  happen  to  me  now,  any  minute,"  he  thought, 
and  for  a  moment  he  felt  terribly.  But  immediately,  he 
did  not  know  himself  how,  the  habitual  thought  occurred 
to  him  that  this  had  happened  to  Ivan  Ilich,  and  not  to 
him,  and  that  this  should  not  and  could  not  happen 
to  him  ;  that  if  he  thought  in  this  manner,  he  submitted  to 
a  gloomy  mood,  which  he  ought  not  to  do,  as  was  evident 
from  Schwarz's  face.  Having  reflected  thus,  Peter  Ivano- 
vich  calmed  himself  and  interestedly  inquired  about  the 
details  of  Ivan  Ilich's  end,  as  though  death  was  an  acci- 
dent which  was  pecuHar  to  Ivan  Ilich  but  by  no  means  to 
him. 

After  many  details  of  the  really  terrible  physical  suffer- 
iags  which  Ivan  Ilich  had  endured  (these  details  Peter 
Ivanovich  learned  only  from  the  way  these  torments  of 
Ivan  Ilich  affected  the  nerves  of  Praskovya  FMorovna), 
the  widow  apparently  found  it  necessary  to  pass  over  to 
business. 

"  Oh,  Peter  Ivanovich,  it  is  so  hard,  so  terribly  hard, 
so  terribly  hard  !  "  and  she  started  weeping  again. 

Peter  Ivanovich  sighed  and  waited  for  her  to  clear  her 
nose.  When  she  had  done  so,  he  said,  "  Believe  me  —  "  and 
she  became  again  voluble  and  made  a  clear  breast  of  what 
evidently  was  her  chief  business  with  him.  This  business 
consisted  in  questions  as  to  how  to  obtain  money  from  the 
government  on  the  occasion  of  her  husband's  death.  She 
made  it  appear  as  though  she  were  asking  Peter  Ivano- 
vich's  advice  in  regard  to  the  pension ;  but  he  saw  that 
she  knew  down  to  the  minutest  details,  what  he  did  not 


12  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAJf    ILICH 

kuow,  what  could  be  got  out  of  the  government  in  con- 
sequence of  this  death,  but  that  she  wanted  to  find  out  if 
it  were  not  possible  in  some  way  to  get  a  little  more 
money  out  of  it.  Peter  Ivanovich  tried  to  discover  a 
means  to  do  so,  but,  after  reflecting  a  Httle  and  out  of 
propriety  scolding  our  government  for  its  stinginess, 
be  said  that  he  thought  that  nothing  more  could  be  got 
from  it.  Thereupon  she  sighed  and  obviously  was  trying 
to  find  a  means  for  ridding  herself  of  her  visitor.  He 
understood  this,  and  so  put  out  his  cigarette,  pressed  her 
baud,  and  went  into  the  antechamber. 

In  the  dining-room  with  a  clock,  to  which  Ivan  Ilich 
had  taken  such  a  fancy  that  he  had  purchased  it  in  a 
bric-a-brac  shop,  Peter  Ivanovich  met  a  priest  and  a  few 
acquaintances  who  had  come  to  be  present  at  the  mass, 
and  saw  Ivan  Ilich's  daughter,  a  pretty  young  lady,  with 
whom  he  was  acquainted.  She  had  a  gloomy,  determined, 
almost  angry  look.  She  bowed  to  Peter  Ivanovich,  as 
though  he  were  guilty  of  something.  Back  of  the  daugh- 
ter stood,  with  the  same  offended  look,  a  wealthy  young 
man,  an  examining  magistrate  and  an  acquaintance  of 
Peter  Ivanovich,  who,  as  he  had  heard,  was  her  fianc^ 
He  bowed  dejectedly  and  was  on  the  point  of  passing 
into  the  room  of  the  dead  man,  when  from  under  the 
staircase  appeared  the  small  form  of  a  gymnasiast,  Ivan 
Ilich's  sou,  who  resembled  his  father  terribly.  This  was 
little  Ivan  Ilich,  such  as  Peter  Ivanovich  remembered  him 
in  the  law  school.  His  eyes  were  small  and  such  as  one 
generally  sees  in  impure  boys  of  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  of  age.  Upon  noticing  Peter  Ivanovich,  the  boy 
began  to  frown  sternly  and  shamefacedly.  Peter  Ivano- 
vich nodded  to  him,  and  entered  the  room  of  the  dead 
man.  The  mass  began,  and  there  were  the  candles, 
groans,  incense,  tears,  sobs.  Peter  Ivanovich  stood  frown- 
ing, looking  at  his  feet  in  front  of  him.  He  did  not  once 
cast  a  glance  on  the  dead  man,  and  did  not  to  the  end 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILICH  13 

succumb  to  the  dissolving  iufluences,  and  was  one  of  the 
first  to  leave  the  room.  There  was  no  one  in  the  aute- 
chamber.  Gerasim,  the  peasant  of  the  buffet-room,  leaped 
out  from  the  room  of  the  deceased  man,  and  with  his 
powerful  hands  rummaged  among  all  the  fur  coats,  in  order 
to  find  the  one  w^hich  belonged  to  Peter  Ivanovich  and 
w^hich  he  handed  to  him. 

"  Well,  friend  Gerasim  ?  "  said  Peter  Ivanovich,  to  be 
saying  something.     "  Are  you  sorry  ? " 

"  It  is  God's  will.  We  shall  all  of  us  be  there,"  said 
Gerasim,  displaying  his  white,  solid  peasant  teeth ;  like 
a  man  in  the  heat  of  intense  work,  he  opened  the  door 
in  lively  fashion,  called  the  coachman,  helped  Peter  Ivano- 
vich in,  and  jumped  back  to  the  porch,  as  though  consider- 
ing what  else  he  had  to  do. 

It  was  especially  pleasant  for  Peter  Ivanovich  to 
breathe  the  pure  air,  after  the  odour  of  incense,  of  the 
dead  body,  and  of  carbohc  acid. 

"  Whither  do  you  command  me  to  drive  you  ? "  asked 
the  coachman. 

"  It  is  not  yet  late,  —  I  will  make  a  call  on  Fedor 
Vasilevich." 

And  Peter  Ivanovich  departed.  He  indeed  found 
them  at  the  end  of  the  first  rubber,  so  that  it  was  conve- 
nient for  him  to  come  in  as  the  fifth. 


n. 

Ivan  Ilich's  past  life  was  simple  and  most  common, 
and  yet  most  terrible. 

Ivan  IKch  died  at  the  age  of  forty-five  years,  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  court  of  justice.  He  was  the  son  of  an  official 
who  had  in  various  ministries  and  departments  of  St. 
Petersburg  made  that  career  which  brings  people  to  that 
state  from  which,  though  it  becomes  evident  to  them  that 
they  are  no  good  for  the  performance  of  any  essential  duty, 
they  none  the  less  cannot  be  expelled,  both  on  account 
of  their  long  past  service  and  their  ranks,  and  so  re- 
ceive imaginary,  fictitious  places,  and  non-fictitious  thou- 
sands, from  six  to  ten,  with  which  they  live  to  a  good  old 
age. 

Such  had  been  the  privy  councillor,  the  useless  member 
of  all  kinds  of  useless  estabhshments,  Ilya  Efimovich 
Golovin. 

He  had  three  sons :  Ivan  Ilich  was  his  second ;  the 
eldest  had  made  a  similar  career  to  that  of  his  father, 
only  in  a  different  ministry,  and  was  rapidly  approaching 
that  official  age  when  one  attains  that  inertia  of  salary. 
The  third  son  was  a  failure.  He  had  continuously  ruined 
himself  in  various  places,  and  was  now  serving  with  the 
railways,  and  his  father  and  his  brothers,  but  especially 
their  wives,  not  only  disliked  meeting  him,  but  without 
some  extreme  need  did  not  even  mention  his  existence. 
His  sister  was  married  to  Baron  Gref,  a  St.  Petersburg 
official  like  his  father-in-law. 

Ivan  Ilich  was  "  le  phcnix  de  la  famille,"  as  they  said. 

He  was  not  as  cold  and  as  precise  as  the  elder,  and  not 

14 


THE    DEATH    OF   IVAN    ILICH  15 

as  desperate  as  the  younger.  He  was  intermediate  be- 
tween them,  —  a  clever,  lively,  agreeable,  and  decent  man. 
He  attended  the  department  of  law  together  with  his 
younger  brother.  The  yor.nger  brother  did  not  graduate, 
and  was  expelled  in  his  tilth  year,  while  Ivan  Ilich 
graduated  high  in  his  class.  Even  while  studying  law 
he  was  what  he  was  later,  during  his  whole  life,  —  a 
capable,  jolly,  and  affable  man,  who  none  the  less  strictly 
carried  out  what  he  considered  to  be  his  duty ;  and  he 
considered  his  duty  that  which  was  so  considered  by  men 
in  the  higher  spheres.  Neither  as  a  boy  nor  as  a  grown 
man  did  he  curry  favour  with  any  one,  but  from  his 
earhest  youth  he  tended,  like  a  fly  to  the  light,  to  men 
who  occupied  the  highest  positions  in  the  world,  adopted 
their  manner  and-  their  views  of  life,  and  established 
friendly  relations  with  them.  All  the  distractions  of 
childhood  and  youth  had  passed  for  him  without  leaving 
any  great  traces ;  he  abandoned  himself  to  sensuality  and 
ambition,  and  toward  the  end  to  the  liberalism  of  the 
higher  classes,  but  all  tliis  within  certain  limits  which  his 
feeling  indicated  to  him  correctly. 

He  had  committed  acts,  while  studying  law,  which  had 
presented  themselves  to  him  as  great  abominations  and 
had  inspired  him  vdth  contempt  for  himself  at  the  time 
that  he  had  committed  them,  but  later,  when  he  observed 
that  such  acts  were  also  committed  by  distinguished  per- 
sonages and  were  not  considered  to  be  bad,  he,  without 
acknowledging  them  to  be  good,  completely  forgot  them 
and  was  by  no  means  grieved  at  the  thought  of  them. 

Having  graduated  from  the  law  school  in  the  tenth 
class  and  having  received  from  his  father  money  with 
which  to  provide  himself  with  clothes,  Ivan  Ilich  ordered 
them  at  Charmeur's,  attached  to  his  fob  a  small  medal 
with  the  inscription,  "  Ecspice  Jinem,"  bade  good-bye  to 
the  prince  and  to  his  tutor,  dined  with  his  companions 
at   Donon's,   and    with   new   trunk,  underwear,   clothes, 


16  THE   DEATH    OF    IVAN   ILICH 

shaving  and  toilet  appurtenances,  and  a  plaid,  all  of  them 
ordered  and  bought  in  the  best  shops,  departed  for  the 
province  to  take  the  place  of  an  official  on  the  governor's 
special  business,  which  his  father  had  procured  for  him. 

In  the  province  Ivan  Ilich  at  once  arranged  the  same 
easy  and  pleasant  position  for  himself  that  he  had  enjoyed 
in  the  law  school.  He  served,  made  a  career  for  himself, 
and  at  the  same  time  passed  his  time  pleasantly  and 
decently ;  now  and  then  he  journeyed  to  the  counties  at 
the  command  of  the  authorities,  bore  himself  with  dignity 
both  toward  those  who  stood  above  him  and  those  who 
stood  beneath  him,  and  with  precision  and  incorruptible 
honesty,  which  he  could  not  help  but  be  proud  of,  carried 
out  the  business  entrusted  to  him,  especially  in  matters 
of  the  dissenters. 

In  matters  of  his  service  he  was,  in  spite  of  his  youth 
and  proneness  to  light  merriment,  extremely  reserved, 
official,  and  even  severe ;  but  in  matters  of  society  he  was 
often  playful  and  witty,  and  always  good-hearted,  decent, 
and  a  "  hon  enfant,"  as  was  said  of  him  by  his  chief  and 
his  chief's  wife,  at  whose  house  he  was  a  close  friend. 

There  was  also  in  the  province  a  liaison  with  one  of 
the  ladies,  who  obtruded  herself  on  the  dandyish  jurist ; 
and  there  was  a  modiste,  and  drinking  bouts  with  visiting 
aids-de-camp,  and  drives  to  a  distant  street  after  supper ; 
there  was  also  a  subserviency  to  the  chief,  and  even  to  the 
wife  of  the  chief,  but  all  this  bore  upon  itself  such  an 
elevated  tone  of  decency  that  it  could  not  be  called  by 
any  bad  words :  it  all  only  fitted  in  with  the  French 
saying,  "  E  faut  que  jeunesse  se  passe"  Everything  took 
place  with  clean  hands,  in  clean  shirts,  with  French  words, 
and,  above  all  else,  in  the  very  highest  society,  con- 
sequently with  the  approval  of  most  distinguished  persons. 

Thus  Ivan  Ilich  served  for  five  years,  and  a  change 
was  made  in  the  service.  There  appeared  new  institutions 
of  law,  and  new  men  were  needed. 


THE    DEATH    OF    lYAN    ILICH  17 

Ivan  Ilich  became  such  a  new  man. 

Ivan  Ilich  was  offered  the  place  of  examining  magis- 
trate, and  accepted  it,  although  this  place  was  in  another 
Government  and  it  became  necessary  for  him  to  give  up 
the  established  relations  and  establish  new  ones.  Ivan 
Ilich  was  seen  off'  by  his  friends,  a  group  was  formed,  a 
silver  cigarette  case  was  presented  to  him,  and  he  departed 
for  the  new  place-. 

Ivan  Ilich  was  the  same  comme  il  faut,  decent  examin- 
ing magistrate,  who  knew  how  to  separate  his  official 
duties  from  his  private  life  and  who  inspired  general 
respect,  that  he  had  been  as  an  official  on  special  business. 
The  post  of  the  examining  magistrate  itself  presented 
much  more  interest  and  attraction  to  him  than  the  one 
he  had  formerly  held.  In  his  former  office  it  had  been  a 
pleasure  to  him  with  an  easy  gait,  and  wearing  Charmeur's 
undress  uniform,  to  pass  by  the  trembling  petitioners, 
who  were  waiting  for  an  audience,  and  by  the  official 
people,  who  envied  him,  and  to  enter  directly  the  chief's 
private  room  and  sit  down  with  him  at  tea  while  smoking 
a  cigarette,  but  there  had  been  but  few  people  who  were 
directly  dependent  on  his  will.  Such  people  had  been 
chiefs  of  rural  police  and  dissenters,  whenever  he  was 
sent  out  on  some  special  business ;  and  he  had  been  fond 
of  treating  such  people,  who  were  dependent  on  him, 
pohtely,  almost  chummiiy,  and  of  making  them  feel  that 
he,  who  might  crush  them,  was  treating  them  in  a  friendly 
and  simple  manner.     There  had  been  but  few  such  people. 

But  now,  while  he  was  an  examining  magistrate,  Ivan 
Ilich  felt  that  all,  all  without  exception,  —  the  most  im- 
portant and  most  self-satisfied  people,  —  were  in  his  hands, 
and  that  he  needed  only  to  write  certain  words  on  a  paper 
with  a  certain  heading,  when  such  an  important,  self- 
satisfied  man  would  be  brought  to  him  in  the  capacity  of 
defendant  or  witness,  who,  if  he  had  no  mind  to  let  him 
sit  down,  would  stand  before  him  and  answer  his  ques- 


18  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

tions.  Ivan  Ilich  never  misused  this  power  and,  on  the 
contrary,  tried  to  mitigate  its  expression ;  l)ut  the  con- 
sciousness of  this  power  and  the  possibility  of  mitigating 
it  formed  for  him  the  chief  interest  and  attraction  of  his 
new  service.  In  the  service  itself,  more  especially  in 
his  examinations,  he  very  soon  acquired  the  manner  of 
removing  from  himself  all  those  circumstances  v/hich  had 
notliing  to  do  with  the  service,  and  of  simplifying  every 
extremely  comphcated  matter  to  a  form  which  would 
permit  the  matter  to  be  reflected  merely  externally  on 
paper,  and  which  completely  excluded  his  personal  view 
and,  above  all,  made  it  possible  to  observe  the  whole 
necessary  formality.  This  was  a  new  business,  and  he 
was  one  of  the  first  men  who  in  practice  worked  out  the 
application  of  the  statutes  of  the  year  1864, 

On  arriving  in  the  new  city,  in  the  capacity  of  examin- 
ing magistrate,  Ivan  Ilich  made  new  acquaintances  and 
connections,  arranged  matters  for  himself  anew,  and  as- 
sumed a  somewhat  different  tone.  He  placed  himseK 
in  a  certain  dignified  aloofness  from  the  provincial  author- 
ities, chose  the  best  circle  consisting  of  members  of  the 
legal  profession  and  of  the  wealthy  gentry  who  lived  in 
the  city,  and  assumed  a  tone  of  shght  dissatisfaction  with 
the  government,  of  moderate  liberalism,  and  of  cultured 
civism.  Besides  this,  Ivan  Ilich,  though  making  no 
change  in  the  elegance  of  his  toilet,  in  this  new  office 
stopped  shaving  his  chin  and  permitted  his  beard  to  grow 
as  it  listed. 

In  this  new  city  Ivan  Ilich's  hfe  again  arranged  itself 
in  a  most  agreeable  manner:  the  society  which  found 
fault  with  the  governor  was  jolly  and  pleasant,  the  salary 
was  larger,  and  not  a  small  degree  of  pleasure  was  at  that 
time  added  by  the  whist  which  Ivan  Ilich  began  to  play, 
being  possessed  of  the  ability  of  playing  cards  merrily, 
and  reflecting  rapidly  and  very  shrewdly,  so  that  on  the 
whole  he  was  always  winning. 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  19 

After  two  years  of  service  iu  the  new  city,  Ivan  Ilich 
met  his  future  wife.  Praskovya  F(5dorovna  Mikhel  was 
the  most  attractive,  clever,  aud  brilliant  girl  of  the  circle 
in  which  he  moved.  Among  the  other  amusements  and 
relaxations  from  the  labours  of  the  examining  magistrate, 
Ivan  Ilich  established  playful,  hght  relations  with  Pras- 
kovya F^dorovna. 

Ivan  Ihch  had  been  in  the  habit  of  dancing  while  he 
was  an  official  on  special  business  ;  but  being  an  examin- 
ing magistrate,  he  danced  only  as  an  exception.  He  now 
danced  iu  this  sense  that,  though  he  was  serving  in  the 
new  institutions  and  belonged  to  the  fifth  class,  he  could 
prove,  when  it  came  to  dancing,  that  in  this  line  he  was 
better  than  anybody  else.  Thus  he  occasionally  danced 
with  Praskovya  F^dorovna  toward  the  end  of  the  evening, 
and  mainly  during  these  dances  conquered  her.  She  fell 
in  love  with  him.  He  did  not  have  any  clear  and  defi- 
nite intention  of  getting  married,  but  when  the  girl  fell 
in  love  with  him,  he  put  this  question  to  himself :  "  In- 
deed, why  can't  I  get  married  ? " 

Miss  Praskovya  F^dorovna  belonged  to  a  good  family 
of  the  gentry,  and  she  had  some  little  property.  Ivan 
Ihch  could  count  on  a  more  brilliant  match,  but  this  one 
was  not  bad,  either.  Ivan  Ilich  had  his  salary,  and  she,  so 
he  hoped,  would  have  as  much  again.  It  was  a  good 
alhance ;  she  was  a  sweet,  pretty,  and  absolutely  decent 
woman.  To  say  that  Ivan  Ilich  married  because  he  loved 
his  fiancee  aud  found  in  her  a  sympathetic  relation  to  his 
views  of  life  would  be  as  unjust  as  saying  that  he  married 
because  the  people  of  his  society  approved  of  the  match. 
Ivan  Ilich  married  for  two  reasons :  he  was  doing  some- 
thing agreeable  for  himself  in  acquiring  such  a  wife,  and 
at  the  same  time  did  what  people  in  high  positions  re- 
garded as  regular. 

And  so  Ivan  Ilich  got  married. 

The  process  of  marrying  itself  and  the  first  period  of 


20  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

his  marital  life,  with  the  conjugal  affection,  new  furniture, 
new  dishes,  new  hnen,  passed  very  well  until  his  wife's 
pregnancy,  so  that  he  began  to  think  that  his  marriage 
would  not  ouly  not  impair  that  character  of  the  easy, 
agreeable,  merry,  and  always  decent  life,  which  was  ap- 
proved of  by  society  and  which  he  regarded  as  peculiar  to 
life  in  general,  but  that  it  would  even  intensify  it.  But 
beginning  with  the  first  month  of  his  wife's  pregnancy, 
there  appeared  something  new,  unexpected,  disagreeable, 
oppressive,  and  indecent,  which  it  had  been  impossible  to 
expect,  and  impossible  to  get  rid  of. 

Without  the  least  provocation,  as  it  seemed  to  Ivan 
Ilich,  "  de  gaite  de  cceur"  as  he  said  to  himself,  his  wife 
began  to  impair  the  pleasure  and  decency  of  life :  she  was 
without  any  cause  jealous  of  him,  demanded  his  atten- 
tions, nagged  him  in  everything,  and  made  disagreeable 
and  vulgar  scenes  with  him. 

At  first  Ivan  Ilich  hoped  to  free  himself  from  the  un- 
pleasantness of  this  situation  by  means  of  that  same  light 
and  decorous  relation  to  life  which  had  helped  him  out 
before ;  he  tried  to  ignore  his  wife's  disposition  and  con- 
tinued to  live  lightly  and  agreeably,  as  before :  he  invited 
his  friends  to  his  house,  to  have  a  game,  and  tried  himself 
to  go  to  the  club  or  to  his  friends ;  but  his  wife  one  day 
began  with  such  energy  to  apply  vulgar  words  to  him,  and 
continued  so  stubbornly  to  scold  him  every  time  that  he 
did  not  comply  with  her  demands,  having  apparently 
determined  not  to  stop  until  he  should  submit,  that  i>s, 
should  stay  at  home  and  experience  tedium  like  herself, 
that  he  became  frightened.  He  comprehended  that  mari- 
tal life,  at  least  with  his  wife,  did  not  always  contribute 
to  the  pleasures  and  the  decency  of  life,  but  on  the  con- 
trary frequently  violated  them,  and  that,  therefore,  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  defend  himself  against  these  viola- 
tions. Ivan  Ilich  began  to  look  for  means  for  this.  His 
service   was  the  one  thing  which  impressed  Praskdvya 


THE    DEATH    OF   lYAN    ILfcH  21 

F^dorovna,  and  Ivan  Ilich  began  by  means  of  his  service 
and  the  duties  resulting  from  it  to  struggle  with  his  wife, 
hedging  in  his  independent  world. 

With  the  birth  of  a  child,  with  the  attempts  at  nursing 
it  aud  the  various  failures  in  this  matter,  with  the  real 
and  imaginary  diseases  of  the  child  and  of  the  mother, 
when  Ivan  Ilich's  cooperation  was  demanded,  though  he 
was  unable  to  comprehend  a  thing  about  these  matters, 
the  necessity  for  hedging  in  his  world  outside  his  family 
became  more  imperative  for  him. 

In  measure  as  his  wife  became  more  irritable  and  more 
exacting,  Ivan  Ihch  more  and  more  transferred  the  centre 
of  his  life  into  his  service.  He  began  to  love  his  service 
more  and  grew  to  be  more  ambitious  than  he  had  been 
before. 

Very  soon,  not  more  than  a  year  after  his  marriage, 
Ivan  Ilich  understood  that  marital  Life,  though  it  pre- 
sented certain  comforts  of  life,  in  reahty  was  a  very 
complex  and  difficult  matter,  in  relation  to  which,  in 
order  to  perform  one's  duty,  that  is,  to  lead  a  decent  life, 
which  is  approved  by  society,  it  was  necessary  to  work 
out  a  certain  relation,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  service. 

And  Ivan  Ilich  worked  out  such  a  relation  to  the 
marital  life.  He  demanded  from  his  domestic  life  noth- 
ing but  those  comforts  of  a  home  dinner,  of  the  hostess, 
of  the  bed,  which  she  could  give  him,  and,  above  all,  that 
decency  of  exterual  forms  which  were  determined  by 
public  opinion.  In  everything  else  he  sought  merry 
enjoyment  and  decency,  and  he  was  thankful  when  he 
found  them.  Whenever  he  met  with  opposition  and 
grumbling,  he  immediately  withdrew  to  the  separate  world 
of  his  service,  in  which  he  hedged  himself  in  and  found 
his  pleasure. 

Ivan  Ilich  was  esteemed  as  a  good  official,  and  after 
three  years  he  was  made  associate  prosecuting  attorney. 
His  new  duties,  their  importance,  the  possibility  of  sum- 


22  THE    DEATH    OF    IV/n    ILICH 

moning  to  court  and  incarcerating  any  person,  the  pub- 
licity of  the  speeches,  the  success  which  Ivan  Ilich  had 
in  this  matter,  —  all  this  attracted  him  more  and  more  to 
the  service. 

There  came  a  succession  of  children.  His  wife  became 
more  irritable  and  grumbled  more  and  more,  but  his  rela- 
tions to  domestic  life,  as  worked  out  by  him,  made  him 
almost  impermeable  to  her  irritability. 

After  seven  years  of  serving  in  one  city,  Ivan  Ilich  was 
transferred  to  another  Government  in  the  capacity  of 
prosecuting  attorney.  They  moved ;  they  had  little 
money,  and  his  wife  did  not  like  the  place  to  which  they 
moved.  Though  his  salary  was  larger  than  before,  the 
living  was  more  expensive ;  besides,  two  of  the  children 
died,  and  so  the  domestic  life  became  even  more  disa- 
greeable for  Ivan  Ilich. 

Praskovya  F^dorovna  reproached  her  husband  for  all 
mishaps  in  this  their  new  place  of  abode.  The  majority 
of  the  subjects  of  conversation  between  husband  and  wife, 
especially  the  education  of  the  children,  led  to  questions 
which  recalled  former  quarrels,  and  quarrels  were  ready 
to  burst  forth  at  any  moment.  There  remained  only 
those  rare  periods  of  amorousness  which  came  over  the 
two,  but  did  not  last  long.  Those  were  islets  where  they 
anchored  for  awhile,  but  they  soon  set  out  again  into  the 
sea  of  hidden  enmity,  which  found  its  expression  in  their 
mutual  alienation.  This  alienation  might  have  grieved 
Ivan  Ilich,  if  he  had  thought  that  this  ought  not  to  be  so  ; 
but  he  now  recognized  this  situation  not  only  as  normal, 
but  even  as  the  aim  of  his  activity  in  the  family.  His 
aim  consisted  in  freeing  himself  more  and  more  from 
these  unpleasantnesses  and  giving  them  the  character 
of  innocuousness  and  decency ;  and  this  he  obtained  by 
passing  less  and  less  time  with  his  family,  and  when  he 
was  compelled  to  be  with  them,  he  tried  to  make  his 
position  secure  by  the  presence  of  third  parties. 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  23 

But  the  chief  thing  was  his  service.  The  whole  inter- 
est of  hfe  centred  for  him  iu  the  official  world.  This 
interest  absorbed  him.  The  consciousness  of  his  power, 
of  the  possibihty  of  ruining  any  man  he  wanted  to  ruin, 
his  importance  with  his  inferiors,  even  externally,  upon 
entering  court  or  meeting  them  elsewhere,  his  success  be- 
fore his  superiors  and  his  subordinates,  and,  above  all,  the 
mastery  with  which  he  conducted  his  cases,  of  which  he 
was  conscious,  —  all  this  gave  him  pleasure,  and  with  his 
conversations  witli  friends,  and  with  dinners  and  whist, 
filled  his  life.  Thus,  in  general,  Ivan  Ilich's  hfe  con- 
tinued to  run  as  he  thought  that  it  ought  to  run, — 
agreeably  and  decently. 

Thus  he  lived  another  seven  years.  His  eldest  daugh- 
ter was  now  sixteen  years  old ;  another  child  had  died, 
and  there  was  left  a  boy,  agymnasiast,  the  subject  of  their 
contentions.  Ivan  Ilich  wanted  to  send  him  to  a  law 
school,  but  Praskovya  Fedorovna,  to  spite  him,  sent  the 
boy  to  a  gymnasium.  The  daughter  studied  at  home  and 
grew  well,  and  the  boy,  too,  studied  not  badly. 


III. 

Thus  Ivan  Ilich's  life  had  run  for  seventeen  years  from 
the  time  of  his  marriage.  He  was  now  an  old  prosecut- 
ing attorney,  who  had  declined  several  transfers  in  the 
expectation  of  a  more  desirable  place,  when  suddenly 
there  happened  a  disagreeable  circumstance  which  com- 
pletely upset  the  calm  of  his  hfe.  Ivan  Ilich  was  waiting 
for  the  place  of  presiding  judge  in  a  university  city ;  but 
Goppe  somehow  gut  ahead  of  him,  and  received  that  place. 
Ivan  Ihch  was  annoyed  at  this,  began  to  make  reproaches, 
and  quarrelled  with  him  and  with  the  nearer  authorities ; 
they  grew  cold  to  him,  and  at  the  next  appointment  he 
was  again  left  out. 

That  happened  in  the  year  1880.  That  year  was  the 
most  difficult  one  in  Ivan  Ilich's  life.  In  that  year  it 
appeared  that,  on  the  one  hand,  the  salary  was  not  large 
enough  to  live  on,  and  that,  on  the  other,  all  had  for- 
gotten him,  and  that  what  in  relation  to  him  appeared  to 
him  as  the  greatest  and  most  cruel  injustice,  to  others 
appeared  as  an  entirely  common  affair.  Even  his  father 
did  not  consider  it  his  duty  to  help  him.  He  felt  that 
all  had  abandoned  him,  considering  his  situation  with 
thirty-five  hundred  roubles  salary  most  normal  and  even 
fortunate.  He  alone  knew  that,  with  the  consciousness 
of  those  cases  of  injustice  which  had  been  done  him,  and 
with  the  eternal  nagging  of  his  wife,  and  with  the  debts 
which  he  had  begun  to  make,  since  he  was  living  beyond 
his  means,  —  he  alone  knew  that  his  situation  was  far 
from  being  normal. 

21 


THE   DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  25 

To  economize,  he  took  that  summer  a  leave  of  absence 
and  went  with  his  wife  to  pass  the  summer  in  the  country 
with  Praskovya  F^dorovna's  brother. 

In  the  country  without  his  service,  Ivan  Ilich  for  the 
first  time  experienced  not  only  tedium,  but  also  intoler- 
able despondency,  and  he  decided  that  it  was  impossible 
to  live  in  this  manner  and  that  it  was  necessary  to  take 
some  decisive  measures. 

Ivan  Ilich  passed  a  sleepless  night,  during  which  he 
walked  up  and  down  the  terrace,  and  he  decided  to  go  to 
St.  Petersburg,  to  bestir  himself,  and,  in  order  to  punish 
them,  who  had  not  appreciated  him,  to  go  over  to  another 
ministry. 

On  the  next  day  he  went  to  St.  Petersburg,  in  spite  of 
the  dissuasions  of  his  wife  and  his  brother-in-law. 

He  went  there  with  one  thing  in  view,  —  to  obtain 
a  place  which  would  give  him  a  salary  of  five  thousand  a 
year.  He  no  longer  stuck  to  any  ministry,  political  bias, 
or  manner  of  activity.  All  he  needed  was  a  place,  a  place 
with  five  thousand,  in  the  administration,  in  the  banks, 
with  the  railways,  in  the  institutions  of  Empress  Mary, 
even  in  the  custom-house,  —  but  it  had  by  all  means 
to  be  five  thousand,  and  he  by  all  means  to  leave  the 
ministry,  where  they  did  not  know  how  to  appreciate 
him. 

This  journey  of  Ivan  Ilich  was  crowned  by  remarkable, 
unexpected  success.  In  Kursk  F.  S.  Ilin,  an  acquaintance 
of  his,  entered  the  coach  of  the  first  class,  and  informed 
him  of  the  contents  of  the  latest  despatch  received  by  the 
governor  of  Kursk,  that  shortly  a  transposition  would  take 
place  in  the  ministry  :  Ivan  Sem^novich  was  to  be  ap- 
pointed in  Peter  Ivanovich's  place. 

The  proposed  transposition  had,  in  addition  to  its  mean- 
ing for  Eussia,  a  special  meaning  for  Ivan  IKch,  for,  by 
bringing  to  the  front  Peter  Petrovich  and,  apparently,  his 
friend  Zakhar  Ivanovich,  it  was  extremely  favourable  for 


26  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILfCH 

Ivan  nich.  Zakhar  Ivanovich  was  Ivau  Ilich's  school- 
mate and  friend. 

In  Moscow  the  news  was  confirmed.  Upon  arriving  at 
St.  Petersburg,  Ivan  Ilich  found  Zakhar  Ivanovich,  from 
whom  he  received  the  promise  of  a  certain  place  in  his 
former  ministry  of  justice. 

A  week  later  he  telegraphed  to  his  wife :  "  Zakhar 
Miller's  place,  with  first  report  I  receive  appointment." 

Thanks  to  this  transposition  of  persons,  Ivan  Ilich 
suddenly  received  an  appointment  in  his  former  ministry, 
which  advanced  him  two  points  above  his  comrades,  and 
gave  him  a  salary  of  five  thousand,  and  thirty-five  hun- 
dred for  travelling  expenses.  His  whole  anger  against 
liis  former  enemies  and  against  the  whole  ministry  was 
forgotten,  and  he  was  quite  happy. 

Ivan  Ilich  returned  to  the  village  merry  and  satisfied, 
as  he  had  not  been  for  a  long  time.  Praskovya  Fedorovna 
herself  was  merry,  and  a  truce  was  estabhshed  between 
them.  Ivan  Ilich  told  of  how  he  had  been  honoured  in 
St.  Petersburg,  how  all  those  who  were  his  enemies  had 
been  put  to  shame  and  now  were  fawning  before  him,  how 
he  was  envied  his  position,  and  especially  how  much  all 
loved  him  in  St.  Petersburg. 

Praskovya  listened  to  it  all,  and  looked  as  though  she 
believed  it  all,  and  did  not  contradict  him  in  anything ; 
she  only  made  plans  for  the  new  arrangement  of  life  in 
the  city  to  which  they  were  going  to  move.  Ivan  Ilich 
saw  with  delight  that  these  plans  were  his  plans,  that 
they  agreed  with  one  another,  and  that  his  arrested  life 
was  once  more  receiving  the  real  character  of  merry 
pleasantness  and  decency  which  was  peculiar  to  it. 

Ivan  Ilich  came  back  for  but  a  short  time.  On  Sep- 
tember the  10th  he  had  to  enter  upon  his  new  office,  and, 
besides,  he  needed  time  to  arrange  matters  in  the  new 
place,  to  transfer  everything  from  the  province,  to  purchase 
things,  to  order  a  lot  more,  —  in  short,  to  arrange  matters 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  27 

as  they  had  been  determined  upon  in  his  mind,  and  almost 
in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  had  been  decided  also  in 
Praskovya  F^dorovna's  mind. 

Now  that  everything  had  been  arranged  so  successfully 
and  he  and  his  wife  agreed  in  their  aims,  and  besides  lived 
so  little  together,  they  became  more  friendly  with  one 
another  than  they  had  been  since  the  first  years  of  their 
married  hfe.  Ivan  Ilich  intended  to  take  his  family  away 
at  once,  but  the  insistence  of  his  sister  and  his  brother- 
in-law,  who  suddenly  became  unusually  amiable  and 
familiarly  interested  in  Ivan  Ilich  and  his  family,  had  this 
effect,  that  Ivan  Ilich  departed  by  himself. 

Ivan  Ilich  departed,  and  the  happy  mood  w^hich  was 
produced  by  his  success  and  the  agreement  with  his  wife, 
one  intensifying  the  other,  did  not  leave  him  all  the  time. 
He  found  charming  quarters,  precisely  what  husband  and 
wife  had  been  dreaming  of  together.  The  large,  high- 
studded  reception-rooms  in  the  old  style,  the  comfortable, 
magnificent  cabinet,  the  rooms  for  his  wife  and  his  daugh- 
ter, the  class-room  for  his  son,  —  everything  was  as  if 
purposely  intended  for  them  ;  Ivan  Ilich  himseK  attended 
to  their  appointments :  he  chose  the  wall-paper,  bought 
more  furniture,  especially  such  as  was  old-fashioned,  which 
gave  the  aspect  of  a  comme  il  faut  style  and  which  he  had 
re-covered,  and  everything  grew  and  grew,  and  arrived  at 
the  ideal  which  he  had  formed  for  himself.  When  he 
had  half  arranged  matters,  his  arrangement  surpassed  his 
expectations.  He  understood  that  comme  il  faut,  elegant, 
and  non-vulgar  character  which  everything  would  assume 
when  it  was  ready. 

When  he  fell  asleep,  he  imagined  the  parlour  as  it  would 
be.  As  he  looked  at  the  drawing-room,  which  was  not 
yet  finished,  he  already  saw  the  fireplace,  the  screen,  the 
shelves,  and  those  scattered  chairs,  those  dishes  and  plates 
along  the  walls,  and  the  bronzes,  when  they  should  all  be 
set  up  in  their  proper  places.     He  rejoiced  at  the  thought 


28  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILfCH 

of  how  he  would  surprise  Praskovya  and  Lizanka,  who 
also  had  good  taste  in  such  things.  They  were  not  ex- 
pecting it  at  all.  He  was  particularly  fortunate  in  finding 
and  purchasing  some  old  things,  which  gave  it  a  pecuharly 
noble  aspect.  In  his  letters  he  purposely  represented 
matters  worse  than  they  were,  in  order  to  startle  them 
the  more.  All  this  interested  him  so  much  that  even  his 
new  service,  though  he  liked  it,  interested  him  less  than 
he  had  expected. 

At  the  sessions  he  had  minutes  of  absent-mindedness ; 
he  was  wondering  what  borders  to  put  on  the  curtains, 
whether  to  have  them  straight  or  gathered.  He  was  so 
busy  with  this,  that  he  frequently  bothered  with  it  him- 
self, transposed  the  furniture,  and  himself  hung  the  cur- 
tains in  different  places.  One  day  he  climbed  a  ladder  in 
order  to  show  the  paper-hanger  how  he  wanted  the  drapery 
hung  ;  he  made  a  misstep  and  fell,  but,  as  he  was  a  stroug 
and  agile  man,  he  caught  himself  in  time,  merely  striking 
his  side  against  the  window-frame  knob.  The  blow  hurt 
a  httle,  but  this  soon  passed  away. 

Ivan  Ilich  felt  himself  particularly  happy  and  well  dur- 
ing this  time.  He  wrote  :  "  I  feel  that  fifteen  years  have 
jumped  off  from  me."  He  l;iad  intended  to  be  through 
with  it  all  in  September,  but  it  lasted  until  the  middle  of 
October.  But  it  was  superb,  so  not  only  he  said,  but  also 
all  those  who  saw  it. 

In  reality  it  was  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  all  not  very 
wealthy  men,  who  want  to  be  like  the  rich,  and  so  only 
resemble  one  another :  there  were  stuffs,  black  wood, 
flowers,  rugs,  and  bronzes,  dark  and  burnished,  everything 
which  people  of  a  certain  class  have  in  order  to  resemble 
all  people  of  a  certain  class.  And  everything  was  so 
much  like  it  in  his  house,  that  it  tvas  even  impossible  to 
direct  one's  attention  to  it,  but  to  him  it  appeared  as 
something  quite  special.  When  he  met  his  family  at  the 
railway  station  and  brought  them  home  to  his  illuminated 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILICH  29 

and  fixed-up  apartments,  and  a  lackey  in  a  white  necktie 
opened  the  door  into  an  antechamber  which  was  all 
adorned  with  flowers,  and  thev  later  entered  the  drawing- 
room  and  the  cabinet,  and  went  into  raptures  from 
pleasure,  —  he  was  very  happy,  led  them  around  every- 
where, imbibed  their  praises  and  shone  with  joy.  On 
that  evening,  when  Praskovya  Fedorovna  asked  him  at 
tea,  among  other  things,  how  he  had  fallen,  he  laughed 
and  impersonated  to  them  how  he  Hew  down  and  fright- 
ened the  paper-hanger. 

"  That's  what  I  am  a  gymnast  for.  Another  man 
would  have  been  killed,  but  I  barely  hit  myself  right 
here ;  when  you  touch  it,  it  hurts,  but  it  is  all  going 
away ;  it  is  simply  a  bump." 

And  they  began  to  live  in  their  new  quarters,  in  which, 
as  is  always  the  case  when  people  have  settled  down, 
there  was  wanting  just  one  room,  and  with  their  new 
means,  to  which,  as  always,  only  a  little,  some  five  hun- 
dred roubles,  was  wanting,  and  everything  was  very  well. 
Especially  well  it  was  at  first,  when  things  were  not  yet  all 
arranged,  and  it  was  necessary  still  to  look  after  things,  — 
now  to  buy,  now  to  order,  now  to  transpose,  now  to  fix 
things.  Though  there  was  some  disagreement  between 
husband  and  wife,  both  were  so  much  satisfied,  and  they 
had  so  much  to  do,  that  everything  ended  without  any 
great  quarrels.  When  there  was  nothing  more  to  arrange, 
it  became  a  little  tedious  and  something  was  wanting,  but 
they  made  new  acquaintances,  acquired  new  habits,  and 
life  was  filled  out. 

Ivan  Ilich  passed  the  morning  in  the  court  and  returned 
for  dinner,  and  at  first  his  disposition  was  good,  though  it 
suffered  somewhat  from  the  apartments.  Every  spot 
on  the  table-cloth  and  on  the  upholstery,  a  torn  cord  of 
the  curtain,  irritated  him.  He  had  put  so  much  labour 
into  the  arrangement  of  things,  that  every  bit  of  destruc- 
tion pained  him.     But,  in  general,  Ivan  Ilich's  Life  went 


30  THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILICH 

on  as  according  to  bis  faith  it  had  to  run,  —  lightly, 
agreeably,  and  decently.  He  got  up  at  nine,  drank 
cofiee,  read  the  newspaper,  then  put  on  bis  undress  uni- 
form, and  went  to  court. 

Here  be  found  the  collar  set  in  which  he  had  to  work : 
he  immediately  found  his  way  into  it.  There  were 
petitioners,  inquiries  at  the  chancery,  the  chancery  itself, 
the  sessions,  —  public  and  administrative  sessions.  In 
all  this  it  was  necessary  to  exclude  everything  raw  and 
vital,  which  for  ever  impairs  the  regularity  of  the  course 
of  official  affairs :  it  was  necessary  not  to  permit  any 
relations  with  people  outside  of  official  ones,  and  the 
cause  for  such  relations  must  be  nothing  but  official,  and 
the  relations  themselves  must  be  nothing  but  official. 
For  example,  a  man  comes  and  wants  to  find  out  some- 
thing. Ivan  Ilich,  as  a  private  citizen,  can  have  no 
relations  with  such  a  man ;  but  if  there  exists  a  relation 
with  such  a  man,  as  to  a  member  of  the  court,  such  a  rela- 
tion as  can  be  expressed  on  paper  with  a  heading,  —  within 
the  limits  of  such  relations  Ivan  Ilich  does  everything,  ab- 
solutely everything  possible,  and  with  this  he  observes  the 
semblance  of  human,  amicable  relations,  that  is,  poHteness. 
The  moment  the  official  relation  comes  to  an  end,  every 
other  relation  is  also  ended.  This  abihty  to  separate  the 
official  side,  without  mixing  it  with  real  life,  Ivan  Ilich 
possessed  in  the  highest  degree,  and  through  long  prac- 
tice and  talent  he  had  worked  it  out  to  such  a  degi'ee  that 
at  times  he  permitted  himseK,  like  an  artist,  as  though 
in  jest,  to  mix  the  human  and  the  official  relations.  He 
took  this  hberty,  because  he  felt  himself  able  always, 
whenever  it  should  be  necessary,  again  to  segregate  what 
was  official  and  reject  what  was  human. 

Things  went  with  Ivan  Ilich  not  only  easily,  agreeably, 
and  decently,  but  even  artistically.  During  pauses  he 
smoked,  drank  tea,  and  chatted  a  l)it  about  politics,  a  little 
about  general  matters,  a  little  about  cards,  and  most  of 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  31 

all  about  appointments.  And  he  returned  home  tired, 
but  with  the  feeling  of  the  artist  who  has  finished 
with  precision  his  part,  one  of  the  first  vioHns  in  the 
orchestra. 

At  home  the  daughter  and  her  mother  were  either  out 
calling  somewhere,  or  they  had  guests  ;  the  son  was  in 
the  gymnasium,  prepared  his  lessons  with  tutors,  and 
studied  well  such  things  as  are  studied  in  a  gymnasium. 
After  dinner,  if  there  were  no  guests,  Ivan  IHch  at  times 
read  a  book  of  which  people  were  talking  a  great  deal, 
and  in  the  evening  sat  down  to  attend  to  business,  that 
is,  he  read  documents  and  looked  into  the  laws,  compar- 
ing depositions  and  finding  corresponding  statutes.  This 
neither  annoyed  him,  nor  gave  him  pleasure.  He  felt 
ennui  when  it  was  possible  to  play  vint ;  but  when  there 
was  no  vint,  this  was  better  than  sitting  alone  or  with 
his  wife.  His  pleasures  consisted  in  small  dinners,  to 
which  he  invited  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  were  dis- 
tinguished so  far  as  their  worldly  position  was  concerned, 
and  in  such  pastime  wdth  them  as  would  resemble  the 
usual  pastime  of  such  people,  just  as  his  drawing-room 
resembled  all  other  drawing-rooms. 

One  time  they  even  had  an  evening  party,  and  there  was 
some  dancing.  Ivan  Ilich  felt  happy  and  everything  was 
well,  except  that  he  had  a  great  quarrel  with  his  wife  on 
account  of  the  cake  and  confectionery :  Praskovya  Fedor- 
ovna  had  her  ovni  plan,  but  Ivan  Ihch  insisted  that 
everything  be  purchased  from  an  expensive  confectioner, 
and  bought  a  lot  of  cake,  and  the  quarrel  w^as  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  cake  was  left  over,  while  the  confectioner's 
bill  amounted  to  forty-five  roubles.  The  quarrel  w^as 
great  and  disagreeable,  so  that  Praskovya  Fedorovna  said 
to  him,  "  Fool,  ninny  !  "  He  clutched  his  head  and  in  his 
anger  made  some  mention  about  divorce.  But  the  even- 
ing itself  was  a  merry  one.  The  best  society  was 
present,  and  Ivan  Ihch  danced  with  Princess  Trufdnov, 


32  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILfCH 

the  sister  of  the  one  who  was  known  through  the  found- 
ing of  the  society  of  "  Carry  away  my  grief." 

The  ojBficial  joys  were  the  joys  of  self-love ;  the  social 
joys  were  the  joys  of  vanity ;  but  Ivan  Ilich's  real  joys 
were  the  joys  of  the  game  of  vint.  He  confessed  that 
after  everything,  after  any  joyless  incidents  in  his  life,  it 
was  a  joy,  which  shone  like  a  candle  before  the  rest, 
to  sit  down  with  good  players,  not  bellowing  partners,  to  a 
game  of  vint,  by  all  means  in  a  four-handed  game  ("  a  five- 
handed  game  is  annoying,  though  I  pretend  that  I  like 
it"),  and  to  carry  on  a  clever,  serious  game  (when  the 
cards  come  your  way),  then  to  eat  supper  and  drink  a 
glass  of  wine.  Ivan  Ilich  used  to  lie  down  to  sleep  after 
a  game  of  vint  in  a  very  good  frame  of  mind,  especially  if 
his  winnings  were  small  (large  ones  are  disagreeable). 

Thus  they  lived.  Their  society  circle  consisted  of  the 
best,  and  distinguished  and  young  people  called  on  them. 

In  their  opinions  of  the  circle  of  their  acquaintances, 
husband,  wife,  and  daughter  were  in  complete  agreement. 
Without  having  plotted  on  the  subject,  they  all  alike 
washed  their  hands  clean  and  freed  themselves  from  all 
kinds  of  friends  and  relatives,  slatternly  people,  who  flew 
at  them  gushingly  in  their  drawing-room  with  the  Japa- 
nese plates  along  the  wall.  Soon  these  slatternly  friends 
stopped  flying  about,  and  the  Golovins  had  nothing  but 
the  very  best  society  left.  Young  men  paid  court  to 
Lizanka,  and  Petrishchev,  the  son  of  Dmitri  Ivanovich 
Petrishchev,  and  the  only  heir  to  his  fortune,  as  examining 
magistrate,  began  to  pay  attention  to  Lizanka,  so  that  Ivan 
Ilich  even  had  a  talk  about  this  matter  with  Praskovya 
Fedorovna,  whether  he  had  not  better  take  them  out 
driving  on  trdykas,  or  arrange  a  performance  for  them. 

Thus  they  lived,  and  everything  went  on  thus,  without 
any  change,  and  everything  was  well. 


IV. 

All  were  well.  It  was  impossible  to  call  ailment  that 
of  which  Ivau  Ilich  now  and  then  said  that  he  had  a 
peculiar  taste  in  his  mouth  and  an  uncomfortable  feeling 
in  the  left  side  of  his  abdomen. 

But  it  so  happened  that  this  discomfort  kept  growing 
and  passing,  not  yet  into  a  pain,  but  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  constant  weight  in  his  side  and  into  ill  humour. 
This  ill  humour,  growing  and  growing  all  the  time,  began 
to  spoil  the  pleasure  of  the  light  and  decent  life  which 
had  established  itself  in  the  family  of  the  Golovins.  Man 
and  wife  began  to  quarrel  more  and  more  often,  and  soon 
there  disappeared  the  ease  and  pleasure,  and  with  diffi- 
culty decency  alone  was  maintained.  The  scenes  became 
more  frequent  again.  Again  there  were  left  some  islets, 
but  only  a  few  of  these,  on  which  husband  and  wife  could 
meet  without  any  explosion.  Praskovya  Fedorovna  now 
said  not  without  reason  that  her  husband  was  hard  to  get 
along  with.  With  her  usual  habit  of  exaggerating,  she 
said  that  he  had  always  had  such  a  terrible  character  that 
one  had  to  have  her  goodness  to  have  stood  him  for  twenty 
years.  It  is  true,  the  quarrels  now  began  with  him.  It 
was  he  who  began  to  find  fault,  always  immediately  before 
dinner,  and  frequently  just  as  he  was  beginning  to  eat, 
during  his  soup.  Now  he  remarked  that  some  dish  was 
chipped,  or  the  food  was  not  just  right,  or  his  son  had  put 
his  elbow  on  the  table,  or  there  was  something  wrong  with 
his  daughter's  hairdressing.  For  everything  he  blamed 
Praskovya  Fedorovna. 

Praskovya  Fedorovna  at  first  retorted  and  told  him 

33 


o4  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

disagreeable  things,  but  he  once  or  twice  flew  into  such 
a  rage  during  the  dinner  that  she  understood  that  this 
was  a  morbid  condition,  which  was  provoked  in  him  by 
the  partaking  of  the  food,  and  she  curbed  herself :  she  no 
longer  retorted,  but  only  hastened  to  eat  her  dinner.  Pras- 
kovya  F^dorovna  regarded  her  humility  as  a  great  desert 
of  hers.  Having  made  up  her  mind  that  her  husband  had 
a  terrible  character,  and  had  been  the  misfortune  of  her 
life,  she  began  to  pity  herself,  and  the  more  she  pitied 
herseK,  the  more  did  she  hate  her  husband.  She  began 
to  wish  that  he  would  die,  but  she  could  not  wish  tliis, 
because  then  there  would  be  no  salary.  And  this  irri- 
tated her  still  more  against  him.  She  considered  herself 
terribly  unfortunate  even  because  his  very  death  could 
not  save  her,  and  she  was  irritated  and  concealed  her 
irritation,  and  this  concealed  irritation  increased  her  irri- 
tation. , 

After  a  scene,  in  which  Ivan  Ilich  was  particularly 
unjust,  and  after  which  he  during  the  explanation  said 
that  he  was  indeed  irritable,  but  that  this  was  due  to  his 
disease,  she  said  to  him  that  if  he  was  ill,  he  had  to 
undergo  a  cure,  and  so  demanded  of  him  that  he  should 
consult  a  famous  physician. 

He  went  to  see  him.  Everything  was  as  he  had 
expected ;  everything  was  done  as  such  things  always 
are.  The  expectancy,  and  the  assumed  importance  of 
the  doctor,  which  was  familiar  to  him  and  which  he 
knew  in  himself  in  the  court,  and  the  tapping,  and  the 
auscultation,  and  the  questions  which  demanded  previ- 
ously determined  and  apparently  useless  answers,  and 
the  significant  aspect  which  seemed  to  say,  "  Just  submit 
to  us,  and  we  shall  arrange  everything ;  we  know  indubi- 
tably how  to  arrange  it  all,  in  the  same  fashion  for  any 
man  you  please."  Everything  was  precisely  as  in  the 
court.  Just  as  he  assumed  a  certain  mien  in  respect  to  the 
defendants,  so  the  famous  doctor  assumed  the  same  mien. 


THE   DEATH    OF   TY/n   ILfCH  35 

The  doctor  said,  "  So  and  so  shows  that  inside  of  you 
there  is  so  and  so  ;  but  if  that  is  not  confirmed  by  the  inves- 
tigation of  so  and  so,  we  shall  have  to  assume  so  and  so. 
If  we  assume  so  and  so,  then  — "  and  so  forth.  Ivan 
Ilich  was  interested  in  but  one  question,  and  that  was, 
whether  his  situation  was  dangerous,  or  not.  But  the 
doctor  ignored  this  irrelevant  question.  From  the  doc- 
tor's standpoint,  this  question  was  idle  and  not  subject 
to  consideration ;  there  existed  only  a  weighing  of  proba- 
bilities, —  between  a  floating  kidney,  a  chronic  catarrh, 
and  the  disease  of  the  cfficum.  This  dispute  the  doctor 
decided  in  the  presence  of  Ivan  Ilich  in  a  brilliant  manner 
in  favour  of  the  caecum,  with  the  proviso  that  the  inves- 
tigation of  the  urine  might  give  new  symptoms,  and  then 
the  case  would  be  revised.  All  that  was  precisely  what 
Ivan  Ilich  had  a  thousand  times  done  in  just  as  brilliant 
a  manner  in  the  case  of  defendants.  The  doctor  made 
his  r^sum(5  in  just  as  brilhant  a  manner,  and  looked  with 
a  triumphant  and  merry  glance  over  his  glasses  at  the 
defendant.  From  the  doctor's  resum^  Ivan  Ilich  drew 
the  conclusion  that  things  were  bad,  and  that  it  was  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  him,  the  doctor,  and,  for  all  that, 
to  all  people,  but  bad  for  himself.  This  conclusion  mor- 
bidly affected  Ivan  Ilich,  provoking  in  him  a  feehng  of 
great  pity  for  himself  and  of  great  anger  against  this  doctor 
who  was  indifferent  to  such  an  important  question. 

But  he  did  not  say  anything ;  he  only  got  up,  put  the 
money  "down  on  the  table,  and  said,  sighing,  "  We  sick 
people  no  doubt  frequently  put  irrelevant  questions  to 
you.     Is  this,  in  general,  a  dangerous  disease,  or  not  ? " 

The  doctor  cast  a  stern  glance  at  him  with  one  eye, 
above  his  glasses,  as  though  saying,  "Defendant,  if  you 
do  not  remain  within  the  limits  of  the  questions  put  to 
you,  I  shall  be  obliged  to  order  your  removal  from  the 
court-room." 

"  I  have  already  told  you  what  I  consider  necessary 


36  THE    DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILICH 

and  proper,"  said  the  doctor.  "  Further  things  will  be 
disclosed  in  the  investigation." 

And  the  doctor  made  a  bow. 

Ivan  Ilich  went  out  slowly,  gloomily  seated  himself  in 
the  sleigh,  and  drove  home.  All  the  way  he  continued 
analyzing  everything  which  the  doctor  had  said,  trying  to 
translate  all  those  mixed,  obscure  scientific  terms  into 
simple  language,  and  to  read  in  them  an  answer  to  the 
question,  "  Am  I  in  bad  shape,  in  very  bad  shape,  or  is  it 
still  all  right  ?  "  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  meaning 
of  everything  said  by  the  doctor  was  that  he  was  in  bad 
shape.  Everything  in  the  streets  appeared  sad  to  Ivan 
Ilicli.  The  drivers  were  sad,  the  houses  were  sad,  the 
passers-by,  the  shops  were  sad.  But  this  pain,  this  duU, 
grinding  pain,  which  did  not  leave  him  for  a  minute, 
seemed,  in  connection  with  the  doctor's  obscure  words,  to 
receive  another,  a  more  serious  meaning.  Ivan  Ilich  now 
watched  it  with  another,  a  heavy  feeling. 

He  came  home  and  began  to  tell  Ms  wife  about  it. 
His  wife  listened  to  him,  but  in  the  middle  of  the  conver- 
sation his  daughter  entered,  with  a  hat  on  her  head ;  she 
was  getting  ready  to  drive  out  with  her  mother.  She 
made  an  eftort  to  sit  down  and  listen  to  all  that  tiresome 
talk,  but  did  not  hold  out,  and  her  mother,  too,  did  not 
stop  to  hear  the  end  of  it, 

"  Well,  I  am  very  glad,"  said  his  wife.  "  So  now,  be 
sure  and  take  the  medicine  regularly.  Give  me  the 
recipe,  —  I  will  send  Gerasim  to  the  apothecary's." 

And  she  went  out  to  get  dressed. 

He  did  not  dare  to  draw  breath  while  she  was  in  the 
room,  but  when  she  left,  he  heaved  a  deep  sigh. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  maybe  it  is,  indeed,  all  right  yet." 

He  began  to  take  medicine,  to  carry  out  the  doctor's 
prescriptions,  which  were  changed  in  consequence  of  the 
urine  investigation.  But  here  it  somehow  happened  that 
in  this  investigation  and  in  what  was  to  follow  after  it 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILfCH  37 

things  became  mLxed  up.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to 
make  his  way  to  the  doctor  himself,  and  it  turned  out 
that  things  were  done  differently  from  what  the  doctor 
had  ordered.  Either  the  doctor  had  forgotten  something 
or  told  an  untruth,  or  was  hiding  something  from  him. 

But  Ivan  Ilich  none  the  less  began  punctually  to  carry 
out  the  doctor's  instructions,  and  at  first  found  some  con- 
solation in  performing  this  duty. 

Ivan  Ilich's  chief  occupation,  since  his  visit  to  the 
doctor,  became  a  punctual  execution  of  the  doctor's  in- 
structions as  regards  hygiene  and  the  taking  of  medicine 
and  the  watching  of  his  disease  and  of  all  the  functions 
of  his  organism.  People's  diseases  and  health  became  his 
chief  interest.  When  they  spoke  in  his  presence  of  sick 
people,  of  such  as  had  died  or  were  recuperating,  espe- 
cially of  a  disease  which  resembled  his  ow^n,  he,  trying  to 
conceal  his  agitation,  listened,  inquired,  and  made  deduc- 
tions as  to  his  own  disease. 

The  pain  did  not  subside ;  but  Ivan  Ilich  made  efforts 
over  himseK,  in  order  to  make  himself  believe  that  he 
was  feeling  better.  He  was  able  to  deceive  himself  so 
long  as  nothing  agitated  him.  But  the  moment  he  had 
some  unpleasantness  with  his  wife,  some  failure  in  his 
service,  bad  cards  in  vint,  he  immediately  felt  the  full 
force  of  his  disease.  Formerly  he  had  borne  these  fail- 
ures, hoping  that  he  would  mend  what  was  bad,  would 
struggle  and  gain  some  success,  would  get  a  full  hand ; 
but  now  every  failure  sapped  his  strength,  and  cast  him 
into  despair.  He  said  to  himself :  "  I  had  just  begun  to 
mend,  and  the  medicine  had  begun  to  act,  when  this  ac- 
cursed misfortune  or  unpleasantness  befell  me  —  "  And  he 
was  furious  at  the  misfortune  or  at  the  people  who  caused 
him  an  unpleasantness  and  were  killing  him,  and  he  felt 
that  this  anger  was  killing  him,  but  was  unable  to  keep 
from  it.  It  would  seem  that  it  must  have  become  clear 
to  him  that  this  embitterment  against  circumstances  and 


38  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

people  only  intensified  his  disease,  and  that,  therefore,  he 
ought  to  pay  no  attention  to  unpleasant  incidents ;  but 
he  made  the  very  contrary  reflection :  he  said  that  he 
needed  calm,  and  watched  everything  which  impaired  his 
calm,  and  became  irritable  with  every  least  impairment. 
What  made  his  condition  worse  was  his  reading  books  on 
medicine  and  consulting  doctors.  His  health  declined  so 
evenly  that  he  was  able  to  deceive  himself  when  he  com- 
pared one  day  with  another,  —  there  was  little  difference. 
But  when  he  consulted  doctors,  it  seemed  to  him  that  he 
was  growing  worse,  and  very  rapidly  at  that ;  but,  in  spite 
of  that,  he  constantly  consulted  doctors. 

This  month  he  called  on  another  celebrity :  the  other 
celebrity  told  him  almost  the  same  as  the  first  celebrity, 
but  put  the  questions  differently.  The  consultation  with 
this  celebrity  only  increased  Ivan  Ilich's  doubt  and  fear. 
The  friend  of  a  friend  of  his,  a  very  good  doctor,  deter- 
mined the  disease  -in  a  still  different  manner,  and,  although 
he  promised  a  cure,  he  with  his  questions  and  assump- 
tions still  more  confused  Ivan  Ilich  and  intensified  his 
doubts.  A  homceopathist  determined  the  disease  in  a 
still  different  way  and  gave  him  some  medicine,  and  he 
took  it  for  a  week,  secretly  from  all.  But  at  the  end  of 
the  week  he  felt  no  relief  and  lost  his  confidence  in  all 
former  treatments  and  in  the  present  one,  too,  and  so  be- 
came still  more  dejected.  At  one  time  a  lady  acquaint- 
ance told  him  of  a  cure  by  means  of  holy  images.  Ivan 
Ilich  caught  himself  listening  attentively  and  believing 
the  actuality  of  the  fact.     This  incident  frightened  him. 

"  Is  it  possible  I  have  mentally  grown  so  feeble  ? "  he 
said  to  himself.  "  Nonsense !  It's  all  bosh !  I  must  not 
submit  to  my  small  faith,  but,  selecting  one  physician, 
must  strictly  adhere  to  his  treatment.  I  shall  do  so.  It's 
all  over  with  that.  I  will  not  think,  and  will  stick  to 
the  one  treatment  until  summer.  We  shall  know  what 
to  do  after  that.     Now  there  is  an  end  to  wavering ! " 


THE   DEATH    OF   IVAX   ILICH  39 

It  was  easy  to  say  all  that,  but  impossible  to  execute 
it.  The  pain  in  his  side  was  still  annoying  and  seemed 
to  be  increasing  and  growing  more  constant ;  the  taste  in 
his  mouth  grew  more  and  more  queer,  —  he  thought  a 
disgusting  smell  came  from  his  mouth,  —  and  his  appetite 
and  his  strength  grew  weaker  and  weaker.  It  was  im- 
possible for  him  to  deceive  himself  :  something  terrible, 
new,  and  more  significant  than  anything  that  had  ever 
taken  place  in  his  life  was  now  going  on  in  him.  He 
alone  knew  of  it,  and  all  those  who  surrounded  him  did 
not  understand  it,  or  did  not  wish  to  understand  it,  and 
thought  that  everything  in  the  world  was  going  on  as 
before.  That  tormented  him  more  than  anything.  His 
home  folk,  especially  his  wife  and  his  daughter,  who  were 
in  the  very  heat  of  calls,  he  saw,  did  not  understand 
a  tiling  about  it  and  were  annoyed  because  he  was  so 
cheerless  and  so  exacting,  as  though  it  were  his  fault. 
Though  they  tried  to  conceal  this,  he  saw  that  he  was  an 
obstacle  to  them,  but  that  his  wife  had  worked  out  for 
herself  a  certain  relation  to  his  disease  and  held  on  to 
it  independently  of  what  he  said  and  did.  This  relation 
was  like  this : 

"  You  know,"  she  would  say  to  her  friends,  "  Ivan 
Ilich,  like  all  good  people,  is  unable  strictly  to  take  the 
prescribed  cure.  To-day  he  will  take  the  drops  and  eat 
what  he  is  ordered  to  eat,  and  will  go  to  bed  early ;  to- 
morrow, if  I  do  not  watch  him,  he  will  forget  to  take  the 
medicine,  will  eat  some  sturgeon  (and  he  is  not  allowed  to 
eat  that),  and  will  sit  up  playing  vint  until  one  o'clock. 

" '  When  did  I  do  it  ? '  Ivan  Ilich  will  say  in  anger. 
'  Just  this  once  at  Peter  Ivanovich's.' 

" '  And  yesterday  at  Shebek's.' 

" '  It  makes  no  difference,  I  cannot  sleep  from  pain  any- 
way.' 

" '  Whether  from  pain  or  from  anything  else,  you  will 
never  get  well  this  way,  and  you  only  torment  us.' " 


40  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

Praskovya  F^dorovna's  external  relatiou  to  her  hus- 
band's ailment,  which  she  expressed  to  him  as  much  as 
to  others,  was  this,  that  Ivan  llich  had  himself  to  blame 
for  this  ailment,  and  that  this  whole  ailment  was  a  new 
annoyance  which  he  was  causing  his  wife.  Ivan  Ilich 
felt  that  that  came  involuntarily  from  her,  but  that  did 
not  make  it  any  easier  for  him. 

In  the  court  Ivan  Ilich  observed,  or  thought  that  he  ob- 
served, the  same  strange  relation  to  himself :  now  it  seemed 
to  him  that  people  peeped  at  him  as  at  a  man  who  was  soon 
to  make  a  place  vacant ;  now  his  friends  began  in  a  jest- 
ing manner  to  tease  him  on  account  of  his  suspiciousness, 
as  though  the  fact  that  something  terrible  and  horrible, 
something  unheard-of,  which  was  taking  place  in  him 
and  gnawing  at  him  and  drawing  him  somewhere,  were 
a  most  agreeable  subject  for  jests.  He  was  particularly 
irritated  by  Schwarz,  who  with  his  playfulness,  vivacity, 
and  conime  il  faut  v;ays  reminded  him  of  what  he  had 
been  ten  years  before. 

Friends  come  to  have  a  game,  and  they  sit  down  at  the 
table.  The  cards  are  dealt;  the  new  cards  are  separated, 
and  the  diamonds  are  placed  with  the  diamonds,  —  seven 
of  them.  The  partner  says,  "  Without  trumps,"  and  sup- 
ports two  diamonds.  What  else  should  one  wish  ?  It 
ought  to  be  jolly  and  lively,  —  a  clean  sweep.  And  sud- 
denly Ivan  Ilich  feels  such  a  gnawing  pain,  such  a  bad 
taste  in  his  mouth,  and  it  feels  so  queer  to  him  to  be  able 
with  all  that  to  find  any  pleasure  in  a  clean  sweep. 

He  looks  at  Mikhail  Mikhaylovich,  his  partner,  as  he 
with  the  hand  of  a  sanguine  man  strikes  the  table  and 
politely  and  condescendingly  refrains  from  sweeping  in 
the  stakes  and  moves  them  up  to  Ivan  Ilich,  in  order  to 
give  liim  the  pleasure  of  taking  them  in,  without  going 
to  much  trouble  or  stretching  his  hand  far. 

"  Does  he  really  think  that  I  am  so  feeble  that  I  can- 
not stretch  out  my  hand?"    thinks  Ivan  Ilich,  and  he 


THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILfCH  41 

forgets  what  is  trumps,  and  unnecessarily  trumps  his  own 
cards,  and  loses  the  clean  sweep  by  three  points,  and,  what 
is  more  terrible  still,  he  sees  Mikhail  Mikhaylovich  suffer- 
ing, and  that  makes  no  difference  to  him.  And  it  is  ter- 
rible  for  him  to  think  that  it  makes  no  difference  to  him. 

All  see  that  it  is  hard  for  him,  and  they  say  to  him : 
"  We  can  stop,  if  you  are  tired.     You  had  better  rest." 

Rest  ?  No,  he  is  not  in  the  least  tired,  —  he  will  finish 
the  rubber.  All  are  sad  and  silent.  Ivau  llich  feels 
that  it  is  he  who  has  cast  this  gloom  over  them,  and  he 
cannot  dispel  it.  They  eat  supper  and  leave,  and  Ivan 
IKch  is  left  alone  with  the  consciousness  that  his  life  is 
poisoned  for  him  and  poisons  others,  and  that  this  poison 
does  not  weaken  him,  but  more  and  more  penetrates  all 
his  being. 

And  it  was  with  this  consciousness,  in  addition  to  the 
physical  pain,  and  with  terror,  that  he  had  to  lie  down  in 
his  bed,  and  often  be  unable  from  pain  to  sleep  the  greater 
part  of  the  night.  In  the  morning  he  had  to  get  up  again, 
go  to  the  court,  or,  if  not  in  court,  stay  at  home  all  the 
twenty-four  hours  of  the  day,  each  of  which  was  a  tor- 
ment. And  he  had  to  hve  by  himself  on  the  edge  of 
perdition,  without  a  single  man  to  understand  or  pity 
him. 


V. 

Thus  passed  a  month,  and  two  months.  Before  New 
Year  his  brother-in-law  arrived  in  the  city,  and  stopped  at 
their  house.  Ivan  Ihch  was  at  court.  Praskovya  F^do- 
rovna  was  out  shopping.  Upon  entering  his  cabinet,  Ivan 
IHch  found  there  his  brother-in-law,  a  healthy  sanguine 
man,  who  was  himself  unpacking  his  satchel.  Upon  hear- 
ing Ivan  Ilich's  steps,  he  raised  his  head  and  for  a  second 
looked  at  him  in  silence.  This  glance  disclosed  every- 
thing to  Ivan  Uich.  The  brother-in-law  opened  his 
mouth  to  exclaim  something  in  amazement,  but  held 
himself  back.     This  motion  confirmed  everything. 

«  Well,  have  I  changed  ? " 

"  Yes  —  there  is  a  change." 

And  no  matter  how  much  Ivan  Ilich  afterward  led  his 
brother-in-law  up  to  talk  about  his  appearance,  his  brother- 
in-law  kept  quiet  about  it.  Praskovya  Fedorovna  came 
home,  and  the  brother-in-law  went  to  see  her.  Ivan  Ilich 
locked  the  door  and  began  to  look  at  himself  in  the  mirror, 
at  first  straight,  and  then  from  one  side.  He  took  the 
photograph  of  himself  and  his  wife,  and  compared  it  with 
what  he  saw  in  the  mirror.  The  change  was  tremendous. 
Then  he  bared  his  arms  as  high  as  the  elbow ;  he  looked 
at  them,  pulled  down  the  sleeves,  sat  down  on  an  ottoman, 
and  grew  darker  than  night. 

"  I  must  not,  I  must  not,"  he  said  to  himself.  He  went 
up  to  the  table,  picked  up  a  law  case,  and  began  to  read 
it,  but  was  unable  to  do  so.  He  opened  the  door  and  went 
into  the  parlour.  The  door  to  the  drawing-room  was 
closed.     He  went  up  to  it  on  tiptoe,  and  began  to  listen. 

42 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  43 

"  No,  you  exaggerate  it,"  said  Praskovya  F^dorovna. 

"  Exaggerate  ?  No.  You  do  not  see  it,  he  is  a  dead 
man,  —  look  into  his  eyes.  There  is  no  light  in  them. 
What  is  the  matter  with  him  ? " 

"  Nobody  knows.  Nikolaev "  (that  was  the  second 
doctor)  "  said  something,  but  I  do  not  know  what.  Lesh- 
chetitski "  (that  was  the  famous  doctor)  "  said,  on  the 
contrary  —  " 

Ivan  Ilich  w^alked  away  and  went  to  his  room ;  he  lay 
down  and  began  to  think :  "  The  kidney,  a  floating  kid- 
ney." He  recalled  everything  which  the  doctors  had  told 
him  about  how  it  had  torn  itself  away  and  was  floating 
around.  He  tried  with  an  effort  of  the  imagination  to 
catch  tliis  kidney,  and  to  arrest  and  fasten  it.  So  little 
was  needed  for  that,  he  thought.  "  No,  I  will  call  on 
Peter  Ivanovich  before  I  do  anything  else."  (This  was 
that  friend  whose  friend  was  a  doctor.)  He  rang  the  bell, 
ordered  the  horse  to  be  hitched  up,  and  got  himself  ready 
to  go. 

"  Whither  are  you  going,  Jean  ?  '*  asked  his  wife,  with 
a  peculiarly  sad  and  strangely  kind  expression. 

This  strangely  kind  expression  made  him  furious.  He 
cast  a  gloomy  glance  at  her. 

"  I  have  some  business  with  Peter  Ivanovich." 

He  drove  to  the  house  of  his  friend,  who  had  a  friend 
who  was  a  doctor.  With  him  he  drove  to  the  doctor.  He 
found  him  at  home,  and  conversed  with  him  for  a  long 
time. 

By  analyzing  anatomically  and  physiologically  the  de- 
tails of  what,  according  to  the  doctor's  opinion,  was  going 
on  in  him,  he  understood  it  all. 

There  was  a  thing,  just  a  little  thing,  in  his  blind  gut. 
All  this  might  change  for  the  better.  Strengthen  the 
energy  of  one  organ,  weaken  the  activity  of  another,  there 
will  take  place  a  suction,  and  all  will  be  well.  He  was  a 
little  too  late  for  dinner.    He  dined  and  conversed  merrily, 


44  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

but  could  not  for  a  long  time  go  back  to  liis  room  to 
attend  to  his  business.  Finally  he  went  to  his  cabinet, 
and  immediately  sat  down  to  work.  He  read  some  cases 
and  worked,  but  the  consciousness  of  the  fact  that  he  had 
a  reserved,  important,  confidential  matter,  with  which  he 
would  busy  himself  after  he  was  through,  did  not  leave 
him.  When  he  was  through  with  work  he  recalled  that 
this  confidential  matter  was  his  thoughts  about  the  blind 
gut.  But  he  did  not  abandon  himself  to  them :  he  went 
to  the  drawing-room  for  tea. 

There  were  guests  there,  and  they  talked,  and  played 
the  piano,  and  sang ;  there  was  also  the  investigating 
magistrate,  his  daughter's  intended.  Ivan  Ilich,  according 
to  Praskovya  F^dorovna's  remark,  passed  a  jollier  evening 
than  ever ;  but  he  did  not  for  a  moment  forget  the  fact 
that  he  had  some  reserved,  important  thoughts  about  the 
blind  gut. 

At  eleven  o'clock  he  excused  himself,  and  went  to  his 
room.  Ever  since  the  beginning  of  his  disease  he  had 
slept  by  himself,  in  a  small  room  near  his  cabinet.  He 
went  there,  undressed  himself,  and  took  up  a  novel  by 
Zola,  but  did  not  read  it,  —  he  was  thinking.  In  his 
imagination  took  place  the  desired  improvement  in  his 
blind  gut.  There  was  a  suction  and  a  secretion,  and  the 
regular  activity  was  reestablished. 

"  Yes,  that  is  all  correct,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  All  one 
has  to  do  is  to  come  to  Nature's  aid." 

He  thought  of  his  medicine.  He  raised  himself  up, 
took  the  medicine,  and  lay  down  on  his  back,  watching 
the  beneficial  effect  of  the  medicine  and  the  destruction 
of  his  pain  by  it. 

"  Take  it  regularly  and  avoid  deleterious  influences, 
that  is  all ;  I  am  beginning  to  feel  a  little  better,  much 
better." 

He  began  to  feel  his  side,  but  it  did  not  pain  to  the 
touch. 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  45 

"Yes,  I  do  not  feel  it,  —  really  it  is  much  better  uow." 

He  put  out  the  light,  and  lay  down  on  his  side.  The 
blind  gut  is  improving,  and  being  sucked  in.  Suddenly 
he  experienced  his  old,  dull,  gnawing  pain,  —  it  was  stub- 
born, calm,  and  serious.  In  the  mouth  was  the  same 
familiar,  abominable  taste.  His  heart  was  pinched,  his 
head  was  dizzy. 

"  My  God,  my  God  ! "  he  muttered,  "  again  and  agaiu, 
and  it  will  never  stop." 

Suddenly  the  matter  presented  itself  to  him  from  an 
entirely  different  side. 

"  The  bhnd  gut,  the  kidney  !  "  he  said  to  himself.  "  It 
is  not  a  question  of  the  blind  gut,  nor  of  the  kidney,  but 
of  life  and  —  death.  Yes,  there  was  life,  and  it  is  going 
away  and  away,  and  I  cannot  retain  it.  Yes.  Why 
should  I  deceive  myself  ?  Is  it  not  evident  to  all  outside 
of  me  that  I  am  dying  ?  The  question  is  only  in  the 
number  of  weeks  and  days  —  perhaps  now.  There  was 
light,  but  now  it  is  darkness.  I  was  here  until  now,  but 
now  I  am  going  thither !     Whither  ? " 

He  was  chilled,  and  his  breath  stopped.  He  heard  only 
the  beats  of  his  heart. 

"  I  shall  be  no  longer,  so  what  will  there  be  ?  There 
will  be  nothing.  But  where  shall  I  be,  when  I  am  no 
longer  ?     Can  it  be  death  ?     No,  I  will  not  die." 

He  leaped  up  and  wanted  to  light  a  candle ;  he  groped 
about  with  trembling  hands,  dropped  the  candle  w^ith 
the  candlestick  On  the  floor,  and  again  fell  back  on  the 
pillow. 

"  What's  the  use  ?  It  makes  no  difference,"  he  said 
to  himself,  looking  with  open  eyes  into  the  darkness. 
"  Death,  yes,  death.  And  not  one  of  them  knows,  or 
wants  to  know,  and  they  have  no  pity.  They  are  play- 
ing." (He  was  hearing  beyond  the  door  the  peal  of  voices 
and  of  a  ritornelle.)  "It  makes  no  difference  to  them, 
but  they,  too,  will  die.     Foolishness  !     First  I,  and  they 


46  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

after  me ;  they  will  come  to  the  same.  And  they  are 
making  merry.     Beasts  !  " 

Malice  was  choking  him.  He  felt  painfully  and  in- 
tolerably oppressed.  It  could  not  be  that  all  should  be 
fated  to  experience  this  terrible  fear.     He  got  up. 

"  Something  is  not  quite  right ;  I  must  calm  myself,  I 
must  consider  everything  from  the  beginning." 

And  he  began  to  consider. 

"  Yes,  the  beginning  of  the  disease.  I  struck  my  side, 
and  I  was  all  the  time  the  same,  to-day  and  to-morrow, 

—  I  had  a  little  pain,  then  more,  then  the  doctors,  then  a 
gnawing  pain,  then  despair,  again  the  doctors  ;  and  I  kept 
coming  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  abyss.  There  is  less 
strength.     Nearer  and  nearer.     And  I  wore  myself  out, 

—  I  have  no  light  in  my  eyes.  And  there  is  death,  and 
I  am  thinking  all  the  time  of  the  blind  gut.  I  am  think- 
ing of  mending  the  gut,  but  this  is  death.  Is  it  really 
death  ? " 

Again  he  was  assailed  by  terror :  he  breathed  heavily, 
and  bent  over,  trying  to  find  a  match,  and  pressed  with 
his  elbow  against  the  foot-rest.  The  foot-rest  was  in  his 
way  and  caused  him  pain,  so  he  grew  angry  at  it  and  in 
his  anger  pressed  harder  against  it  and  threw  it  down. 
In  his  despair  he  lost  his  breath  and  threw  himself 
down  on  his  back,  expecting  death  to  come  at  once. 

At  this  time  the  guests  were-  departing.  Praskovya 
F^dorovna  was  seeing  them  off.  She  heard  something 
fall,  and  entered  the  room. 

"  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? " 

"  Nothing.     I  dropped  it  accidentally." 

She  went  out  and  brought  a  candle.  He  was  lying 
down,  breathing  heavily  and  fast,  like  a  man  who  had  run 
a  verst,  and  looked  at  her  with  an  arrested  glance. 

"  What  is  the  matter  with  you,  Jean  ?  " 

"  Noth — ing.     I  —  dropped  —  it." 

"  What  is  the  use  of  telling  her  ?     She  will  not  under- 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  47 

stand  it,"  he  thought.  She  did  not  understand  it  indeed. 
She  lifted  the  foot-rest,  lighted  a  candle  for  him,  and  hur- 
ried away.     She  had  to  see  a  guest  off. 

When  she  came  back  he  was  still  lying  on  his  back, 
looking  at  the  ceiling. 

"  How  are  you  ?     Are  you  feehng  worse  ? " 

"  Yes." 

She  shook  her  head,  and  sat  awhile. 

"  Do  you  know,  Jean  ?  I  think  it  would  be  well  to 
send  for  Leshchetitski." 

This  meant  that  she  wanted  to  send  for  the  famous  doc- 
tor, and  not  to  spare  any  expense.  He  smiled  a  sarcastic 
smile,  and  said,  "  No."  She  sat  awhile,  and  then  went 
up  to  him  and  kissed  his  brow. 

He  hated  her  with  all  the  strength  of  his  soul  just  as 
she  was  kissing  him,  and  he  made  an  effort  over  himself 
not  to  push  her  back. 

"  Good  night.     God  will  grant  you  to  fall  asleep," 

"  Yes." 


VI. 

Ivan  IiicH  saw  that  he  was  dying,  but  he  was  not 
only  not  used  to  this,  but  simply  did  not  understand  and 
was  absolutely  unable  to  understand  it. 

That  example  of  a  syllogism  which  he  had  learned 
from  Kiesewetter's  logic,  "  Caius  is  a  man,  men  are  mortal, 
consequently  Caius  is  mortal,"  had  all  his  life  seemed 
true  to  him  only  in  regard  to  Caius,  but  by  no  means  to 
him.  That  was  Caius  the  man,  man  in  general,  and  that 
was  quite  true ;  but  he  was  not  Caius,  and  not  man  in 
general ;  he  had  always  been  an  entirely,  entirely  differ- 
ent being  from  all  the  rest ;  he  had  been  Vanya  with  his 
mother,  with  his  father,  Mitya,  and  Volodya ;  with  his  toys, 
the  coachman,  and  the  nurse ;  then  with  Kateuka,  with 
all  the  joys,  sorrows,  and  delights  of  childhood,  boyhood, 
youth.  Had  there  ever  existed  for  Caius  that  odour  of 
the  striped  leather  ball,  which  Vanya  had  been  so  fond 
of  ?  Had  Caius  kissed  his  mother's  hand  in  the  same 
way,  and  had  the  silk  of  the  folds  of  his  mother's  dress 
rustled  in  the  same  way  for  Caius  ?  Had  he  been  as 
riotous  about  patties  at  the  Law  School  ?  Had  Caius  been 
in  love  like  him  ?  Had  Caius  been  able  to  conduct  a 
session  like  him  ? 

"  Caius  is  indeed  mortal,  and  it  is  proper  for  him  to 
die,  but  for  me,  Vanya,  Ivan  Ilich,  with  all  my  feelings 
and  thoughts,  for  me  it  is  an  entirely  different  matter. 
It  cannot  be  proper  for  me  to  die.  That  would  be  too 
terrible." 

That  was  the  way  he  felt  about  it. 

48 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  49 

"  If  I  were  to  die  like  Caius,  I  should  know  it,  and  an 
inner  voice  would  tell  me  so,  but  nothing  similar  has  been 
the  case  witli  me,  and  I  and  all  my  friends  understood 
that  it  is  not  all  the  same  as  with  Caius.  But  now  it 
is  like  this ! "  he  said  to  himself.  "  It  is  impossible ! 
It  cannot  be,  but  it  is  so.  How  is  this  ?  How  is  this  to 
be  comprehended  ? " 

And  he  was  unable  to  understand,  and  tried  to  dispel 
this  thought  as  being  false,  irregular,  and  morbid,  and  to 
substitute  for  it  other,  regular,  healthy  thoughts.  But  this 
thought,  —  not  merely  thought,  but,  as  it  were,  reality,  — 
came  back  and  stood  before  him. 

And  he  invoked  in  the  place  of  this  thought  other 
thoughts  in  rotation,  in  the  hope  of  finding  a  support  in 
them.  He  tried  to  return  to  former  trains  of  thought, 
which  heretofore  had  veiled  the  thought  of  death  from 
him.  But,  strange  to  say,  what  formerly  had  veiled,  con- 
cealed, and  destroyed  the  consciousness  of  death,  now 
could  no  longer  produce  this  effect.  Of  late  Ivan  Ilich 
passed  the  greater  part  of  his  time  in  these  endeavours  to 
reestabhsh  his  former  trains  of  feeling,  which  had  veiled 
death  from  him. 

He  said  to  himself,  "  I  will  busy  myself  with  my  serv- 
ice, for  have  I  not  lived  by  it  heretofore  ? "  and  he  went 
to  court,  dispelling  all  doubts  from  himself ;  he  entered 
into  conversations  with  his  associates,  and  seated  himself 
in  his  customary  manner,  casting  a  distracted,  pensive 
glance  upon  the  crowd,  and  leaning  with  both  his  emaci- 
ated hands  on  the  rests  of  the  oak  chair,  leaning  over  to 
an  associate,  as  on  former  occasions,  moving  up  the  case, 
and  whispering,  and  then,  suddenly  casting  an  upward 
glance  and  seating  himself  straight,  he  pronounced  the 
customary  words  and  began  the  case.  But  suddenly,  in 
the  middle,  the  pain  in  his  side,  paying  no  attention  to  the 
period  of  the  development  of  the  case,  began  its  own 
gnawing  work.     Ivan  Ilich  listened   to  it  and  dispelled 


50  THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   I  LICE 

the  thought  of  it,  but  it  continued  its  work  and  came  and 
stationed  itself  right  in  front  of  him  and  looked  at  him, 
and  he  was  dazed,  and  the  tire  went  out  in  his  eyes,  and 
he  began  to  ask  himself  again,  "  Is  it  possible  it  alone  is 
true  ? "  And  his  associates  and  his  men  under  him  saw 
in  surprise  and  sorrow  that  he,  such  a  brilliant  and  shrewd 
judge,  was  getting  mixed  and  making  blunders.  He  shook 
himself,  tried  to  come  back  to  his  senses,  and  somehow 
managed  to  bring  the  session  to  a  close,  and  returned 
home  with  the  sad  consciousness  that  his  judicial  work 
could  not,  as  it  had  done  of  old,  conceal  from  him  what 
he  wished  to  be  concealed,  and  that  by  means  of  his 
judicial  work  he  could  not  be  freed  from  it.  And,  what 
was  worst  of  all,  was  this,  that  it  drew  him  toward  itself, 
not  that  he  might  be  able  to  do  something,  but  only  that 
he  might  look  at  it,  straight  into  its  eyes,  —  that  he  might 
look  at  it  and,  without  doing  anything,  might  suffer 
unutterably. 

And,  while  trying  to  escape  this  state,  Ivan  Ilich  sought 
consolation  and  other  shields,  and  the  other  shields  ap- 
peared and  for  a  short  time  seemed  to  save  him,  but  very 
soon  they  were  again,  not  destroyed,  but  made  trans- 
parent, as  though  it  penetrated  through  everything,  and 
nothing  could  shroud  it. 

During  this  last  period  he  entered  the  drawing-room 
which  he  himself  had  furnished,  —  that  drawing-room 
where  he  had  fallen,  for  which  he,  —  as  he  thought  with 
sarcasm  and  ridicule,  —  for  the  arrangement  of  which  he 
had  sacrificed  his  life,  for  he  knew  that  his  disease  had 
begun  with  that  hurt ;  he  entered  and  saw  that  there  was  a 
nick  in  the  table.  He  looked  for  the  cause  of  it,  and  found 
it  in  the  bronze  adornment  of  the  album  which  was  bent 
at  the  edge.  He  took  the  album,  an  expensive  one,  —  he 
had  made  it  himself  with  love,  —  and  was  annoyed  at  the 
carelessness  of  his  daughter  and  her  friends,  —  here  there 
was  a  tear,  and  there  the  photographs  were  turned  bottom 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  51 

side  up.  He  brought  it  all  carefully  back  into  shape  and 
bent  the  adornment  back  again. 

Then  occurred  to  him  the  thought  of  transplanting  all 
this  etahlissement  with  the  albums  to  another  corner,  near 
the  flowers.  He  called  up  a  lackey  ;  either  his  daughter 
or  his  wife  came  to  his  rescue:  they  did  not  agree  and 
contradicted  him,  —  he  quarrelled  and  grew  angry ;  but 
everything  was  good,  for  he  did  not  think  of  it,  —  it  was 
not  to  be  seen. 

But  just  then  his  wife  said,  as  he  moved  the  things, 
"  Let  the  servants  do  it,  you  will  only  hurt  yourself,"  and 
suddenly  it  flashed  above  the  screen,  and  he  saw  it.  It 
flashed  by,  and  he  still  hopes  that  it  will  pass,  but  he  in- 
voluntarily listens  to  one  side,  —  it  is  still  seated  there 
and  still  causing  him  the  same  gnawing  pain,  and  he  can 
no  longer  forget,  and  it  looks  at  him  quite  clearly  from 
behind  the  flowers.     What  is  this  all  for  ? 

"  And  it  is  true  that  I  lost  my  life  on  this  curtain,  as 
though  m  the  storming  of  a  fortress.  Is  it  really  so  ? 
How  terrible  and  how  stupid  !  It  cannot  be !  It  cannot 
be,  but  it  is  so." 

He  went  into  his  cabinet,  and  lay  down  there,  and  was 
again  left  all  alone  with  it,  —  face  to  face  with  it,  —  and 
there  was  nothing  he  could  do  with  it.  All  he  had  to  do 
was  to  look  at  it  and  grow  cold. 


VTI. 

How  it  all  happened  in  the  third  month  of  Ivan  Ilich's 
disease  is  hard  to  tell,  because  it  all  happened  impercep- 
tibly step  by  step,  but  what  happened  was  that  his  wife, 
and  his  son,  and  the  servants,  and  his  acquaintances,  and 
the  doctors,  and,  above  all  else,  he  himself  knew  that  the 
whole  interest  in  him  consisted  for  others  in  nothing  but 
the  question  how  soon  he  would  vacate  the  place,  would 
free  the  living  from  the  embarrassment  produced  by  his 
presence,  and  would  himself  be  freed  from  his  sufferings. 

He  slept  less  and  less :  he  was  given  opium,  aud  they 
began  to  inject  morphine  into  him.  But  this  did  not  make 
it  easier  fo-r  him.  The  dull  dejection  which  he  experi- 
enced in  his  half-sleeping  state  at  first  gave  him  rehef  as 
something  new,  but  later  it  grew  to  be  the  same,  and  even 
more  agonizing,  than  the  sharp  pain. 

They  prepared  particular  kinds  of  food  for  him  accord- 
ing to  the  doctor's  prescriptions ;  but  these  dishes  tasted 
to  him  more  and  more  insipid,  and  more  and  more  abom- 
inable. 

Special  appliances,  too,  were  used  for  his  evacuations, 
and  every  time  this  was  a  torture  to  him,  —  a  torture  on 
account  of  the  impurity,  the  indecency,  and  the  smell, 
and  from  the  consciousness  that  another  person  had  to 
take  part  in  it. 

But  in  this  most  disaoreeablc  matter  Ivan  Ilich  found 
his  consolation.  The  peasant  of  the  buffet,  Gerasim, 
always  came  to  carry  out  his  vessel.  Now  Gerasim  was  a 
clean,  fresh  young  peasant,  who  had  improved  much  on  his 

52 


THE    DEATH    OF    lYAX    ILICH  53 

city  food.  He  was  always  merry  and  precise.  At  first 
the  sign  of  this  cleanly  man,  who  was  dressed  in  Eussian 
fashion  and  did  this  detestable  work,  embarrassed  Ivan 
IHch. 

One  time,  upon  getting  up  from  the  vessel,  and  being 
unable  to  hft  up  his  trousers,  he  dropped  down  into  a 
soft  chair  and  looked  in  terror  at  his  bared,  impotent 
thighs  with  their  sharply  defined  muscles. 

Gerasim,  in  heavy  boots,  spreading  about  him  the 
agreeable  odour  of  tar  from  his  boots  and  of  the  freshness 
of  the  winter  air,  stepped  into  the  room  with  heavy  tread. 
He  wore  a  clean  hempen  apron  and  a  clean  chintz  shirt, 
the  sleeves  of  which  were  rolled  up  on  his  bare,  strong, 
youthful  arms,  and  without  looking  at  Ivan  IKch,  and 
apparently  repressing  the  joy  of  life  which  shone  upon 
his  face,  in  order  not  to  offend  the  patient,  he  walked  over 
to  the  vessel. 

"  Gerasim,"  Ivan  Ilich  said,  in  a  feeble  voice. 

Gerasim  trembled,  apparently  in  fear  of  having  done 
something  wrong,  and  with  a  rapid  motion  turned  to  the 
patient  his  fresh,  kindly,  simple,  youthful  face,  which  was 
just  beginning  to  be  covered  with  a  beard. 

"  What  do  you  wish  ?  " 

"  I  suppose  this  is  unpleasant  for  you.  Excuse  me. 
I  cannot  help  it." 

"  Not  at  all,  sir."  And  Gerasim  flashed  his  eyes  and 
displayed  his  youthful,  white  teeth.  "  Why  should  you 
trouble  yourself  ?     You  are  sick." 

And  with  his  strong,  agile  hands  he  did  his  usual  work, 
and  walked  out,  stepping  lightly.  Five  minutes  later  he 
returned,  stepping  as  lightly  as  before. 

Ivan  Ilich  was  sitting  in  the  chair  in  the  same 
posture. 

"  Gerasim,"  he  said,  when  Gerasim  had  put  down  the 
vessel,  which  had  been  washed  clean,  "  please,  come  here 
and  help  me." 


54  THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILfcH 

Gerdsim  went  up  to  him. 

"  Lift  me  up.  It  is  hard  for  me  to  do  it  all  alone,  and 
I  have  sent  Dmitri  away." 

Gerasim  went  up  to  him :  with  his  strong  arms  he 
embraced  him  as  lightly  as  he  stepped,  raised  him  skil- 
fully and  softly,  held  him  up,  with  one  hand  pulled  up 
his  trousers,  and  wanted  to  put  him  down  again  in  the 
chair.  But  Ivan  Ilich  asked  to  be  taken  to  the  divan. 
Gerasim  without  an  effort,  and  as  though  without  press- 
ing against  him,  took  him,  almost  carried  him,  to  the 
divan,  and  seated  him  on  it. 

"  Thank  you.  How  skilfully  and  well  you  do  every- 
thing." 

Gerasim  smiled  again,  and  was  on  the  point  of  leaving. 
But  Ivan  Ilich  felt  so  well  with  him  that  he  did  not  want 
to  dismiss  him. 

"  Be  so  kind  as  to  push  that  chair  up  to  me.  No,  that, 
—  under  my  feet.  I  feel  more  at  ease  when  my  legs 
are  raised." 

Gerasim  brought  him  the  chair,  which  he  put  down 
evenly  on  the  floor  without  making  a  noise  with  it,  and 
raised  Ivan  Ilich's  feet  on  the  chair.  It  seemed  to  Ivan 
Ilich  that  he  felt  more  at  ease  while  Gerasim  was  rais- 
ing up  his  legs. 

"  I  feel  more  at  ease  when  my  legs  are  higher,"  said 
Ivan  Ilich.     "  Put  that  pillow  under  me." 

Gerasim  did  so.  He  raised  the  legs  and  put  the  pillow 
down.  Again  Ivan  Ilich  felt  better  while  Gerasim  was 
holding  his  legs.  When  Gerasim  put  them  down,  he 
thought  he  felt  worse. 

"  Gerasim,"  he  said  to  him,  "  are  you  busy  now  ? " 

"  Not  at  all,  sir,"  said  Gerasim,  who  had  learned  from 
city  folk  how  to  talk  to  gentlemen. 

"  What  else  have  you  to  do  ? " 

"  What  else  have  I  to  do  ?  I  have  done  everythiug, 
and  have  only  to  chop  some  wood  for  to-morrow." 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN   ILICH  6§ 

"  If  SO,  hold  up  my  legs  a  little  higher,  —  can  you  do 
it?" 

"  Why  not  ?     I  can." 

Gerasim  raised  his  legs  higher.  And  it  seemed  to  Ivan 
Ilich  that  in  this  position  he  did  not  feel  any  pain  at  all. 

"  And  how  about  the  wood  ? " 

"Do  not  trouble  yourself.  We  shall  get  time  for 
it." 

Ivjin  Ilich  ordered  Gerasim  to  sit  down  and  hold  his 
legs,  and  entered  into  a  conversation  with  him.  And, 
strange  to  say,  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  felt  better  so 
long  as  Gerasim  was  holding  his  legs. 

From  that  time  on  Ivan  Ilich  began  to  call  in  Gerasim, 
and  made  Gerasim  keep  his  legs  on  his  shoulders,  and 
was  fond  of  talking  with  him.  Gerasim  did  this  lightly, 
gladly,  simply,  and  with  a  goodness  which  affected  Ivan 
Ilich.  Health,  strength,  vivacity  in  all  other  people 
offended  Ivan  IHch ;  but  Gerasim 's  strength  and  vivacity 
did  not  sadden  him,  —  it  soothed  him. 

Ivan  Ilich's  chief  suf!ering  was  from  a  lie.  This  he, 
for  some  reason  accepted  by  all,  was  this,  that  he  was 
only  sick  and  not  dying,  and  that  he  needed  but  to  be  calm 
and  be  cured,  and  then  all  would  go  well.  He  knew  full 
well  that,  no  matter  what  they  might  do,  nothing  would 
come  of  it  but  still  more  agonizing  suffering  and  death. 
And  he  was  tormented  by  this  lie  and  by  this,  that  they 
would  not  confess  what  all,  and  he,  too,  knew,  but  insisted 
on  lying  about  him  in  this  terrible  situation,  and  wanted 
and  compelled  him  to  take  part  in  this  lie.  The  lie,  the 
lie,  this  lie  which  was  perpetrated  on  him  on  the  day 
previous  to  his  death  and  which  was  to  reduce  this  terrible, 
solemn  act  of  his  death  to  the  level  of  all  their  visits, 
curtains,  sturgeon  at  dinner,  was  dreadfully  painful  for 
Ivan  Ilich.  And,  strange  to  say,  often,  while  they  were 
perpetrating  their  jests  on  him,  he  was  within  a  hair's 
breadth  of  shouting  out  to  them,  "  Stop  lying  !    You  know, 


66  THE   DEATH   OF   IVAN   ILfcH 

and  I,  too,  know  that  I  am  dying,  —  so  stop  at  least  your 
lying."     But  he  had  never  the  courage  to  do  it. 

The  horrible,  terrible  act  of  his  dying,  he  saw,  was  by 
all  those  who  surrounded  him  reduced  to  the  level  of 
an  accidental  unpleasantness  and  partly  to  that  of  an 
indecency  (something  the  way  they  treat  a  man  who, 
upon  entering  a  drawing-room,  spreads  a  bad  odour), 
through  that  very  "  decency  "  which  he  had  been  serving 
all  his  life ;  he  saw  that  no  one  would  pity  him,  because 
no  one  wanted  even  to  understand  his  position.  Gerasim 
was  the  only  one  who  understood  this  position  and  pitied 
him.  And  so  Ivan  Ilich  never  felt  happy  except  when 
he  was  with  Gerasim.  He  felt  well  when  Gerasim, 
frequently  whole  nights  at  a  stretch,  held  his  legs  and 
would  not  go  to  bed,  saying,  "  Please  not  to  trouble  your- 
self, Ivan  Illch,  I  shall  get  enough  sleep  yet ; "  or  when  he, 
passing  over  to  "  thou,"  suddenly  added,  "  If  thou  wert 
not  a  sick  man  it  would  be  different,  but  as  it  is,  why 
should  I  not  serve  thee  ?  " 

Gerasim  was  the  only  one  who  did  not  lie ;  everything 
proved  that  he  alone  understood  what  the  matter  was, 
and  did  not  consider  it  necessary  to  conceal  it,  but  simply 
pitied  his  emaciated,  feeble  master.  Once,  when  Ivan 
Ilich  sent  him  away,  he  went  so  far  as  to  say : 

"  We  shall  all  of  us  die.  Why  should  we  not  trouble 
ourselves  ? "  with  which  he  meant  to  say  that  he  did  not 
find  his  labour  annoying,  for  the  reason  that  he  was  doing 
it  for  a  dying  man,  and  that  he  hoped  that  in  the  proper 
time  some  one  would  do  the  same  for  him. 

Besides  this  lie,  or  in  consequence  of  it,  Ivan  Ilich  was 
most  annoyed  by  this,  that  no  one  pitied  him  the  way  he 
wanted  to  be  pitied  ;  at  certain  moments,  after  long  suffer- 
ings, Ivan  Ilich  wanted  most  of  all,  however  much  he  was 
ashamed  to  acknowledge  the  fact,  that  some  one  should 
pity  him  like  a  sick  child.  He  wanted  to  be  petted, 
kissed,    and   fondled,  as  they   pet  and  console  children. 


THE    DEATH    OF    lYAN    ILICH  57 

He  knew  that  he  was  an  important  member  of  the  court 
and  that  his  beard  was  streaked  gray,  and  that,  therefore, 
that  was  impossible ;  but  he  none  the  less  desired  it.  In 
his  relations  with  Gerasim  there  was  something  resembling 
it,  and  so  his  relations  with  Gerasim  gave  him  consolation. 
Ivan  Ilich  feels  like  crying,  and  wants  to  be  petted 
and  cried  over ;  and  there  comes  his  associate,  member 
Shebek,  and,  instead  of  crying  and  being  petted,  Ivan  Ilich 
assumes  a  serious,  stern,  pensive  aspect,  and  from  inertia 
expresses  his  opinion  on  the  decree  of  the  court  of  cas- 
sation, and  stubbornly  sticks  to  his  view.  This  lie  all 
around  him  and  in  himself  more  than  anything  else 
poisoned  the  last  days  of  Ivan  IKch's  life. 


VIII. 

It  was  morning.  It  was  morning,  because  Gerasim 
went  away,  and  Peter  the  lackey  came  in  his  place :  he 
put  out  the  candles,  drew  aside  one  curtain,  and  began 
softly  to  fix  up  the  room.  Whether  it  was  morning  or 
evening,  Friday  or  Sunday,  did  not  make  the  slightest 
difference,  —  it  was  all  the  same  :  the  gnawing,  agonizing 
pain,  which  did  not  subside  for  a  minute ;  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  hopelessly  receding,  but  not  yet  receded  life ; 
the  same  impending,  terrible,  hateful  death,  which  alone 
was  reahty,  and  still  the  same  lie.  Where  could  there  be 
here  days,  weeks,  and  hours  of  the  day  ? 

"  Do  you  command  me  to  bring  you  tea  ?  " 

"  His  order  demands  that  gentlemen  should  drink  tea 
in  the  morning,"  he  thought,  but  he  said  only : 

«  No." 

"  Do  you  not  wish  to  go  over  to  the  divan  ? " 

"He  has  to  tidy  up  the  room,  and  I  am  in  his  way, — 
I  am  an  impurity,  a  nuisance,"  he  thought,  and  all  he  said 
was: 

"  No,  leave  me." 

The  lackey  bustled  a  httle  while.  Ivan  Ilich  extended 
his  hand.     Peter  came  up,  ready  to  serve  him. 

"  What  do  you  wish  ?  " 

"  The  watch." 

Peter  got  the  watch  which  was  lying  under  Ivan  Ilich's 
hand,  and  gave  it  to  him. 

"  Half-jjast  eight.     Have  they  not  got  up  yet  ? " 

"  Not  yet,  sir.      Vasili  Ivanovich  "  (that  was  his  son) 

"  has  gone  to  the  gymnasium,  and  Praskovya  F^dorovna 

58 


THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILICH  59 

has  commanded  that  she  be  wakened,  if  you  should  ask 
for  her.     Do  you  command  me  ?  " 

"  No,  don't." 

"  Maybe  I  had  better  try  some  tea  ?  "  he  thought. 

"  Yes,  tea.     Bring  me  tea." 

Peter  started  to  go  out.  Ivan  Ilich  felt  terribly  at 
being  alone. 

"  How  can  I  keep  him  ?     Yes,  the  medicine." 

"  Peter,  give  me  the  medicine." 

"  Why  not  ?     Maybe  the  medicine  will  help  me  yet." 

He  took  a  spoonful  and  swallowed  it. 

"No,  it  will  not  help  me.  It  is  all  nonsense  and  a 
deception,"  he  decided,  the  moment  he  had  the  famihar, 
detestable,  hopeless  taste  in  his  mouth.  "  No,  I  can  no 
longer  believe.  But  the  pain,  the  pain,  what  is  it  for  ? 
If  it  would  only  stop  for  just  a  minute." 

And  he  sobbed.     Peter  came  back. 

"  No,  go.     Bring  me  some  tea." 

Peter  went  away.  When  Ivan  Ilich  was  left  alone,  he 
groaned,  not  so  much  from  pain,  no  matter  how  terrible 
it  was,  as  from  despondency.  "  Always  the  same  and  the 
same,  all  these  endless  days  and  nights.  If  it  would  only 
come  at  once.  What  at  once  ?  Death,  darkness.  No, 
no.     Anything  is  better  than  death ! " 

When  Peter  came  back  with  the  tea  on  a  tray,  Ivan 
Ilich  for  a  long  time  looked  distractedly  at  him,  being 
unable  to  make  out  who  he  was,  or  what  he  wanted. 
Peter  was  confounded  by  this  look.  When  Peter  looked 
confounded,  Ivan  Ilich  came  to  his  senses. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  the  tea ;  all  right,  put  it  down.  Only 
help  me  to  get  washed,  and  let  me  have  a  clean  shirt." 

And  Ivan  Ilich  got  up  to  wash  himself.  Stopping 
occasionally,  he  washed  his  hands  and  face,  cleaned,  his 
teeth,  began  to  comb  his  hair,  and  looked  into  the  mirror. 
He  felt  terribly,  especially  so,  because  his  hair  lay  flat 
over  his  pale  brow. 


60  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

As  his  shirt  was  being  changed,  he  knew  that  he  would 
feel  more  terribly  still  if  he  looked  at  his  body,  and  so  he 
did  not  look  at  himself.  But  all  was  ended.  He  put  on 
his  morning-gown,  covered  himself  with  a  shawl,  and  sat 
down  in  a  chair  to  his  teti.  For  a  minute  he  felt  himself 
refreshed,  but  the  moment  he  began  to  drink  the  tea  there 
was  again  the  same  taste,  and  the  same  pain.  He  with 
difficulty  finished  his  glass  and  lay  down,  stretching  his 
legs.     He  lay  down,  and  dismissed  Peter. 

Again  the  same.  Now  a  drop  of  hope  would  sparkle, 
and  now  a  sea  of  despair  would  be  agitated,  and  all  the 
time  the  pain,  and  the  pain,  and  the  despondency,  and 
again  the  same  and  the  same.  He  felt  terribly  despondent 
by  himself  and  wanted  to  call  some  one  in,  but  he  knew 
in  advance  that  in  the  presence  of  others  it  would  be 
worse  still. 

"  If  I  just  had  some  morphine  again,  —  I  should  forget. 
I  will  tell  him,  the  doctor,  to  think  out  something  else. 
It  cannot  go  on  this  way,  it  cannot." 

Thus  an  hour,  two  hours  pass.  But  now  there  is  the 
bell  in  the  antechamber.  Perhaps  the  doctor.  Indeed,  it 
is  the  doctor,  fresh,  vivacious,  fat,  jolly,  with  an  ex- 
pression which  seems  to  say,  "  Now  there  you  are  all 
frightened,  but  we  will  fix  it  aU  in  a  minute."  The 
doctor  knows  that  this  expression  is  of  no  use  here,  but 
he  has  put  it  on  once  for  all  and  cannot  take  it  off,  like  a 
man  who  in  the  morning  puts  on  his  dress  coat  and  goes 
out  calling. 

The  doctor  rubs  his  hands  briskly  and  in  a  consoling 
manner. 

"  I  am  cold.  It  is  a  cutting  frost.  Just  let  me  get 
warmed  up,"  he  says  with  an  expression  which  says  that 
all  that  is  necessary  is  for  him  to  get  warmed  up,  and  as 
soon  as  he  is  warm  he  will  fix  it  all. 

"  Well,  how  is  it  ? " 

Ivan  Ilich  feels  that  the  doctor  wants  to  say,  "  How 


THE    DEATH    OF    I  VAX    ILICH  61 

are  our  affairs  ? "  but  that  he  himself  feels  that  it  would 
not  do  to  speak  in  this  manner,  and  so  he  says, "  How  did 
you  pass  the  night  ?  " 

Ivan  Ilich  looks  at  the  doctor  with  a  questioning  ex- 
pression : 

"  Will  you  never  feel  ashamed  of  lying  ? " 

But  the  doctor  does  not  want  to  understand  the  ex- 
pression, and  Ivan  Ilich  says  : 

"  Just  as  terribly  as  ever.  The  pain  does  not  pass 
away,  does  not  subside.     If  it  would  stop  just  a  little !  " 

"  You  patients  are  always  like  that.  Well,  sir,  now,  it 
seems,  I  am  all  warmed  up,  and  even  most  exact  Pras- 
kovya  Fedorovna  would  not  be  able  to  object  to  my 
temperature.  Well,  sir,  good  morning,"  and  the  doctor 
presses  his  hand. 

Throwing  aside  his  former  playfulness,  the  doctor  be- 
gins with  a  serious  glance  to  investigate  the  patient,  his 
pulse,  his  temperature,  and  there  begin  tappings  and 
auscultations. 

Ivan  Ilich  knows  full  well  and  indubitably  that  all 
this  is  nonsense  and  mere  deception,  but  when  the  doctor, 
getting  down  on  his  knees,  stretches  out  over  him,  leaning 
his  ear  now  higher  up,  and  now  lower  down,  and  with  a 
significant  expression  on  his  face  makes  over  him  all 
kinds  of  gymnastic  evolutions,  Ivan  Ilich  submits  to  it,  as 
he  submitted  to  the  speeches  of  the  lawyers,  though  he 
knew  well  that  they  were  ranting  all  the  time,  and  why 
they  were  ranting. 

The  doctor  was  still  kueehng  on  the  divan,  tapping  at 
something,  when  Praskovya  Fedorovna's  silk  dress  rustled 
at  the  door,  and  there  was  heard  her  reproach  to  Peter  for 
not  having  announced  to  her  the  doctor's  arrival. 

She  comes  in,  kisses  her  husband,  and  immediately 
proceeds  to  prove  that  she  got  up  long  ago,  and  that  only 
by  a  misunderstanding  did  she  fail  to  be  present  when  the 
doctor  came. 


62  THE   DEATH   OF   IVAN   ILICH 

Ivan  Ilich  looks  at  her,  examines  her  whole  figure,  and 
finds  fault  with  the  whiteness,  chubbiness,  and  cleanliness 
of  her  hands  and  neck,  the  gloss  of  her  hair,  and  the 
sparkle  of  her  vivacious  eyes.  He  hates  her  with 
the  whole  strength  of  his  soul.  Her  touch  makes  him 
suffer  from  an  access  of  hatred  toward  her. 

Her  relation  to  him  and  his  sickness  is  still  the  same. 
As  the  doctor  had  worked  out  for  himself  a  relation  to  his 
patients,  which  he  was  unable  to  divest  himself  of,  so  she 
had  worked  out  a  certain  relation  to  him,  —  that  he  was 
somehow  not  doing  what  he  ought  to  do,  and  was  himself 
to  blame  for  it,  and  she  lovingly  reproached  him  for  it,  — 
and  was  unable  to  divest  herself  of  this  relation  to  him. 

"  Well,  he  pays  no  attention.  He  does  not  take  the 
medicine  on  time.  Above  all  else,  he  lies  down  in  a  posi- 
tion which,  no  doubt,  is  injurious  to  him,  —  with  his 
legs  up." 

She  told  the  doctor  how  he  made  Gerasim  hold  up  his 
legs. 

The  doctor  smiled  a  contemptuously  kind  smile : 

"  Well,  what  is  to  be  done  ?  These  patients  at  times 
invent  such  foolish  things,  —  but  we  can  forgive  them." 

When  the  examination  was  ended,  the  doctor  looked  at 
his  watch,  and  Praskovya  Fedorovna  announced  to  Ivan 
Ilich  that  she  did  not  care  what  he  would  do,  but  she 
had  sent  for  a  famous  doctor,  who  in  company  with  Mi- 
khail Danilovich  (so  the  ordinary  doctor  was  called)  woulc^ 
make  an  examination  and  have  a  consultation. 

"  Don't  object  to  this,  if  you  please.  I  am  doing  this 
for  my  own  sake,"  she  said  ironically,  giving  him  to 
understand  that  she  was  doing  everything  for  his  sake, 
and  in  this  way  did  not  give  him  the  right  to  refuse  her. 
He  was  silent,  and  frowned.  He  felt  that  this  he  which 
surrounded  him  was  becoming  so  entangled  that  it  was 
getting  hard  to  make  out  anything. 

She  was  doing  everything  about  him  for  her  own  sake, 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  63 

and  she  told  him  that  she  was  doing  for  herself  every- 
thing that  she  really  was  doing  for  herself,  as  though 
it  were  such  an  incredible  thing  that  he  ought  to  under- 
stand it  as  the  exact  opposite. 

Indeed,  at  half-past  eleven  the  famous  doctor  arrived. 
Again  there  were  auscultations  and  significant  conversa- 
tions in  his  presence  and  in  another  room  about  the 
kidney  and  the  blind  gut,  and  questions  and  answers 
with  such  significant  looks  that  instead  of  the  real  ques- 
tion about  life  and  death,  which  alone  now  stood  before 
him,  there  again  came  forward  the  question  about  the 
kidney  and  the  blind  gut,  which  were  not  acting  as  they 
ought  to,  and  which  Mikhail  Danilovich  and  the  celeb- 
rity will  for  this  reason  attack  and  compel  to  get  better. 

The  famous  doctor  departed  with  a  serious,  but  not 
with  a  hopeless,  look.  In  reply  to  the  timid  question, 
which  Ivan  Ilich  directed  to  him  with  eyes  raised  to  him 
and  shining  with  terror  and  hope,  as  to  whether  there 
was  any  possibility  of  recovery,  he  replied  that  he  could 
not  guarantee  it,  but  that  it  was  possible.  The  glance  of 
hope  with  which  Ivan  Ilich  saw  the  doctor  off  was  so 
pitiful  that,  seeing  it,  Praskovj^a  Fddorovna  even  burst 
out  into  tears  as  she  went  out  of  the  cabinet,  in  order  to 
give  the  famous  doctor  his  fee. 

The  elation  of  spirit,  produced  by  the  doctor's  en- 
couragement, did  not  last  long.  There  were  again  the 
same  room,  the  same  pictures,  curtains,  wall-paper,  bottles, 
and  the  same  paining,  suffering  body.  Ivan  Ilich  began 
to  groan ;  they  gave  him  an  injection,  and  he  forgot  him- 
self. 

When  he  came  to,  it  was  growing  dark ;  they  brought 
him  his  dinner.  He  took  with  difficulty  some  soup,  and 
again  it  was  the  same,  and  again  nightfall. 

After  dinner,  at  seven  o'clock,  the  room  was  entered  by 
Praskdvya  Fedorovna,  who  was  dressed  as  for  an  evening 
entertainment,  with  swelling,  raised  up  breasts,  and  traces 


64  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

of  powder  on  her  face.  She  had  talked  to  him  in  the 
morning  of  going  to  the  theatre.  Sarah  Bernhardt  was  in 
the  city,  and  they  had  a  box  which  he  had  insisted  that 
they  should  take.  Now  he  forgot  about  it,  and  her  attire 
offended  him.  But  he  concealed  his  offence  when  he  re- 
called that  he  himself  had  insisted  on  their  taking  a  box 
and  going,  because  this  was  for  the  children  an  educa- 
tional, esthetic  enjoyment. 

Praskovya  F(^dorovna  came  in  satisfied  with  herself, 
but  seemingly  guilty.  She  sat  down  for  awhile,  asked 
him  about  his  health,  as  he  saw,  merely  to  ask,  but  not 
to  find  out,  knowing  that  there  was  nothing  to  find  out, 
and  began  to  speak  of  what  she  wanted  to  speak  of,  that 
she  would  not  go  at  all  if  the  box  had  not  been  engaged, 
and  that  with  her  were  going  Helfene,  and  their  daughter, 
and  Petrishchev  (their  daughter's  fianc^),  and  that  it  was 
impossible  to  let  them  go  by  themselves.  It  really  would 
give  her  more  pleasure  to  stay  at  home ;  but  he  must  be 
sure  and  do  in  her  absence  according  to  the  doctor's  pre- 
scription. 

"  Yes,  Fed  or  Petrovich  "  (the  fianc^)  "  wanted  to  come 
in.     May  he  ?     And  Liza." 

"  Let  them  come  in." 

The  daughter  came  in.  She  was  all  dressed  up,  with 
a  bared  youthful  body,  that  body  which  caused  him  to 
suffer  so  much  ;  but  she  exposed  it.  She  was  strong, 
healthy,  apparently  in  love,  and  vexed  at  the  disease, 
suffering,  and  death,  which  interfered  with  her  happi- 
ness. 

There  entered  also  F^dor  Petrovich,  in  dress  coat,  with 
his  hair  fixed  h  la  Capoul,  with  a  long  sinewy  neck, 
tightly  surrounded  by  a  white  collar,  with  an  enormous 
white  chest  and  close-fitting  trousers  over  powerful  thighs, 
with  a  white  handkerchief  drawn  over  his  hand,  and  with 
an  opera  hat. 

After  him  imperceptibly  crawled  in  the  little  gymnasiast, 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILfCH  65 

in  a  bran-new  uniform,  —  poor  fellow,  —  and  with  terrible 
blue  marks  under  his  eyes,  the  meaning  of  which  Ivan 
Ilich  knew. 

His  son  always  looked  pitiful  to  him,  and  terrible  was 
his  frightened  and  compassionate  glance.  Besides  Gerasim, 
it  seemed  to  Ivan  Ilich,  Vasya  was  the  only  one  who 
understood  and  pitied  him. 

All  sat  down,  and  again  asked  about  his  health.  There 
ensued  a  silence.  Liza  asked  her  mother  about  the  opera- 
glass.  Mother  and  daughter  exchanged  words  about  who 
was  at  fault  for  having  mislaid  it.  It  was  an  unpleasant 
incident. 

F^dor  Petrovich  asked  Ivan  Ilich  whether  he  had  seen 
Sarah  Bernhardt.  At  first  Ivan  Ilich  did  not  understand 
what  it  was  they  were  asking  him,  but  later  he  said : 

"  No,  and  have  you  seen  her  already  ? " 

"  Yes,  in  Adrieune  Lecouvreur." 

Praskovya  Fedorovua  said  that  she  was  particularly 
good  in  this  or  that.  Her  daughter  objected.  There 
ensued  a  conversation  about  the  art  and  the  realism  of 
her  play,  that  very  conversation  which  is  always  one  and 
the  same. 

In  the  middle  of  the  conversation  Fedor  Petrovich 
looked  at  Ivan  Ilich,  and  grew  silent.  The  others  looked 
at  him,  too,  and  grew  silent.  Ivan  Ilich  was  looking  with 
glistening  eyes  ahead  of  him,  apparently  vexed  at  them. 
It  was  necessary  to  mend  all  this,  but  it  was  impossible 
to  do  so.  It  was  necessary  to  interrupt  the  silence.  No- 
body could  make  up  his  mind  to  do  so,  and  all  felt  terribly 
at  the  thought  that  now  the  decent  lie  would  somehow 
be  broken,  and  every  one  would  see  clearly  how  it  all 
was.  Liza  was  the  first  to  make  up  her  mind.  She 
interrupted  the  silence.  She  wanted  to  conceal  what  all 
were  experiencing,  but  she  gave  herself  away : 

"  If  we  are  to  go  at  all,  it  is  time  we  started,"  she  said, 
looking  at  her  watch,  a  present  from  her  father,  and  she 


66  THE   DEATH    OF   IVAN   ILICH 

smiled  at  the  young  man  a  faint,  significant  smile  about 
something  which  they  alone  knew,  and  got  up,  causing 
her  dress  to  rustle. 

All  arose,  said  good-bye,  and  departed. 

When  they  went  out,  it  seemed  to  Ivan  Ilich  that  he 
was  feeling  easier :  there  was  no  lie,  —  it  departed  with 
them,  —  but  the  pain  was  still  left.  The  old  pain,  the 
old  terror  made  him  feel  neither  harder,  nor  easier.  It 
was  all  worse. 

Again  minute  after  minute  elapsed,  and  hour  after 
hour,  and  again  the  same,  and  again  no  end,  and  more 
and  more  terrible  the  inevitable  end. 

"  Yes,  call  Gerasim,"  he  answered  to  Peter's  question. 


IX. 

His  wife  returned  late  in  the  night.  She  entered  on 
tiptoe,  but  he  heard  her.  He  opened  his  eyes  and  has- 
tened to  shut  them  again.  She  wanted  to  send  Gerasim 
away  and  to  sit  up  with  him.  He  opened  his  eyes,  and 
said: 

"  No,  go." 

"  Do  you  suffer  very  much  ? " 

"  It  makes  no  difference." 

"  Take  some  opium." 

He  consented,  and  took  some.     She  went  away. 

Until  about  three  o'clock  he  was  in  agonizing  oblivion. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  he  with  his  pain  was  being  shoved 
somewhere  into  a  narrow,  black,  and  deep  bag,  and  shoved 
farther  and  farther,  without  coming  out  of  it.  And  this 
terrible  act  was  accompanied  by  suffering.  And  he  was 
afraid,  and  wanted  to  go  through  the  bag,  and  fought,  and 
helped  along.  And  suddenly  he  tore  away,  and  fell,  and 
woke  up.  The  same  Gerasim  w^as  sitting  at  his  feet  on 
the  bed,  drowsing  calmly  and  patiently.  But  Ivan  Ilicli 
was  lying,  his  emaciated,  stockinged  feet  resting  on  Gera- 
sim's  shoulders,  and  there  was  the  same  candle  with  the 
shade,  and  the  same  uninterrupted  pain. 

"  Go  away,  Gerasim,"  he  whispered. 

"  Never  mind,  sir,  I  will  sit  up." 

"  No,  go." 

He  took  off  his  feet,  and  lay  down  sidewise  on  his  arm 
and  began  to  feel  pity  for  himself.  He  just  waited  for 
Gerasim  to  go  to  the  adjoining  room,  and  no  longer  re- 
strained himself,  but  burst  out  into  tears,  like  a  child. 

67 


68  THE    DExVTH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

He  wept  on  account  of  his  helplessness,  his  terrible  loneli- 
ness, the  cruelty  of  men,  the  cruelty  of  God,  the  absence 
of  God. 

"Why  hast  Thou  done  all  this?  Why  didst  Thou 
bring  me  to  this  ?  Why,  why  dost  Thou  torment  me  so 
terribly  ? " 

He  did  not  expect  any  answer,  and  was  weeping 
because  there  was  no  answer  and  could  be  none.  The 
pain  rose  again,  but  he  did  not  stir,  did  not  call.  He  said 
to  liimself : 

«  Go  on,  strike  me  I  But  for  what  ?  What  have  I 
done  to  Thee  ?     For  what  ? " 

Then  he  grew  silent  and  stopped  not  only  weeping,  but 
also  breathiug,  and  became  all  attention  :  it  was  as  though 
he  hstened,  not  to  the  voice  which  spoke  with  sounds, 
but  to  the  voice  of  his  soul,  to  the  train  of  thoughts 
which  rose  in  him. 

"  What  do  you  want  ? "  was  the  first  clear  expression, 
capable  of  being  uttered  in  words,  which  he  heard. 

"What  do  you  want?  What  do  you  want?"  he 
repeated  to  himself.  "  What  ?  Not  to  suffer.  To  live  ! " 
he  answered. 

And  again  he  abandoned  himself  wholly  to  attention, 
to  such  tense  listening,  that  his  pain  even  did  not 
distract  him. 

"  To  hve  ?     To  live  how  ? "  asked  the  voice  of  his  soul. 

"  To  live  as  I  used  to  hve  before,  —  well,  pleasantly." 

"  As  you  lived  before,  well  and  pleasantly  ? "  asked  a 
voice.  And  he  began  in  imagination  to  pass  in  review 
the  best  minutes  of  his  pleasant  life.  But,  strange 
to  say,  all  these  best  minutes  of  his  pleasant  life  now 
seemed  to  him  to  be  different  from  what  they  had  seemed 
to  be  before,  —  all  of  them,  except  the  first  recollections 
of  childhood.  There,  m  childhood,  there  had  been  some- 
thing really  agreeable,  with  which  it  would  be  possible 
to  live  if  hfe  should  return ;    but  the  man  who  had  expe- 


THE   DEATH    OF   IVAX    ILICH  69 

rienced  those  pleasant  sensations  was  no  more  ;    it  was 
like  a  recollection  of  somebody  else. 

As  soon  as  there  began  that  which  resulted  in  the 
present  man,  in  Ivan  Ilich,  everything  which  then  had  ap- 
peared as  joys  now  melted  in  his  sight  and  changed  into 
something  insignificant  and  even  abominable. 

And  the  farther  away  from  childhood  and  nearer  to  the 
present,  the  more  insignificant  and  doubtful  were  the  joys. 
This  began  with  the  law  school.  There  had  been  there 
something  truly  good ;  there  had  been  there  merriment, 
friendship,  hopes.  But  in  the  upper  classes  these  good 
minutes  had  happened  more  rarely ;  those  were  the  rec- 
ollections of  the  love  of  woman.  Then  all  got  mixed,  and 
there  was  still  less  of  what  was  good.  Farther  on  there- 
was  still  less  of  what  was  good,  and  the  farther,  the  less. 

"  The  marriage  —  so  sudden,  and  the  disenchantment, 
and  the  odour  from  my  wife's  mouth,  and  sensuality,  and 
hypocrisy  !  And  this  dead  service,  and  these  cares  about 
the  money,  and  thus  passed  a  year,  and  two,  and  ten,  and 
twenty,  —  all  the  time  the  same.  The  farther,  the  deader. 
It  was  as  though  I  were  going  evenly  down-hill,  imagining 
that  I  was  going  up-hill.  And  so  it  was.  In  public  opinion 
I  went  up-hill,  —  and  just  in  that  proportion  did  my  life 
vanish  under  me,  —  And  now  it  is  all  done,  —  go  and 
die! 

"  So  what  is  this  ?  Wliy  ?  Impossible.  It  cannot  be 
that  life  should  be  so  senseless  and  so  abominable !  And 
if  it  has  indeed  been  so  abominable  and  meaningless,  what 
sense  is  there  in  dying,  and  in  dying  with  suffering  ? 
Something  is  wrong. 

"  Perhaps  I  did  not  live  the  proper  way,"  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  him.  "  But  how  can  that  be,  since  I  did  every- 
thing that  was  demanded  of  me  ? "  he  said  to  himself,  and 
immediately  he  repelled  from  himself  this  only  solution 
of  the  whole  enigma  of  life  and  of  death,  as  something 
totally  impossible. 


70  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAX    ILICH 

"  WTiat  do  you  want  now  ?  To  live  ?  To  live  how  ? 
To  live  as  you  live  in  the  court,  when  the  bailifi'  proclaims, 
*  The  court  is  coming ! '  The  court  is  coming,  the 
court  is  coming  ! "  he  repeated  to  himself.  "  Here  is  the 
court !  But  I  am  not  guilty  ! "  he  shouted  in  anger.  "  For 
what  ? "  And  he  stopped  weeping  and,  turning  his  face 
to  the  wall,  began  to  think  of  nothing  but  this  one  thing : 
"  Why,  for  what  is  all  this  terror  ?  " 

But,  no  matter  how  much  he  thought,  he  found  no 
answer.  And  when  the  thought  occurred  to  him,  and  it 
occurred  to  him  often,  that  all  this  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  not  lived  in  the  proper  way,  he  immediately 
recalled  all  the  regularity  of  his  hfe,  and  dispelled  this 
strange  thought. 


Two  more  weeks  passed.  Ivan  Ilich  no  longer  rose  from 
his  divan.  He  did  not  want  to  lie  in  his  bed,  and  lay 
on  the  divan.  Lying  nearly  all  the  time  with  his  face  to 
the  wall,  he  suffered  in  loneliness  the  same  insoluble  suf- 
ferings, and  in  lonehness  thought  the  same  insoluble 
thought.  "  What  is  this  ?  Is  this  really  death  ? "  And 
an  inner  voice  answered  him  :  "  Yes,  it  is.  "  "  What  are 
these  torments  for  ?  "  and  the  voice  answered :  "  For  no 
special  reason."  After  that  and  outside  of  that  there  was 
nothing. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  sickness,  from  the  first 
time  that  he  went  to  see  the  doctor,  his  life  was  divided 
into  two  opposite  moods  which  gave  way  to  one  another : 
now  it  was  despair  and  the  expectancy  of  incredible  and 
terrible  death,  and  now  hope  and  an  absorbing  observa- 
tion of  the  activity  of  his  body.  Now  there  was  before 
his  eyes  nothing  but  his  kidney  or  gut,  which  had  for  the 
time  being  deflected  from  the  fulfilment  of  its  obhgations, 
and  now  it  was  the  one  incomprehensible,  terrible  death, 
from  which  it  was  impossible  to  be  freed  in  any  way 
whatever. 

These  two  moods  alternated  from  the  very  beginning  of 
his  sickness ;  but  the  farther  his  disease  proceeded,  the 
more  doubtful  and  fantastic  did  his  imagination  grow  in 
respect  to  the  kidney,  and  the  more  real  came  to  be  the 
consciousness  of  impending  death. 

He  needed  but  to  recall  what  he  had  been  three 
months  before  and    what   he   now  was,  to   recall    how 

71 


72  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

evenly  he  had  been  going  down-hill,  in  order  that  every 
possibihty  of  hope  should  be  destroyed. 

During  the  last  stage  of  the  lonehness  in  v^hich  he 
was,  lying  with  his  face  turned  to  the  back  of  the  divan, 
of  that  loneliness  amidst  a  populous  city  and  his  numer- 
ous acquaintances  and  his  family,  —  a  loneliness  fuller 
than  which  can  nowhere  be  found,  —  neither  at  the 
bottom  of  the  sea,  nor  in  the  earth,  —  during  the  last 
stages  of  this  terrible  loneliness  Ivan  llich  lived  in  his 
imagination  only  in  the  past.  One  after  another  there 
arose  before  him  pictures  of  his  past.  They  always  began 
with  what  was  nearest  in  time  and  ran  back  to  what  was 
most  remote,  to  childhood,  and  there  they  stopped.  If 
Ivan  llich  thought  of  the  stewed  prunes  which  he  was 
offered,  to-day  to  eat,  he  recalled  the  raw,  wrinkled  French 
prunes  of  his  childhood,  their  particular  taste,  and  the 
abundance  of  saliva  when  he  reached  the  stone,  and  side 
by  side  with  this  recollection  of  the  taste  there  ai'ose  a 
whole  series  of  recollections  from  that  time,  —  the  nurse, 
the  brother,  the  toys. 

"I  must  not  think  of  this,  —  it  is  too  painful,"  Ivan 
Ilich  said  to  himself,  and  again  transferred  himself  to  the 
present.  A  button  on  the  back  of  the  divan  and  wrin- 
kles in  the  morocco.  "The  morocco  is  expensive,  —  not 
durable,  —  there  was  a  quarrel  on  account  of  it.  It  was 
a  different  kind  of  morocco,  and  a  different  quarrel,  when 
we  tore  father's  portfolio,  and  were  punished,  and  mother 
brought  us  patties."  And  again  his  thoughts  stopped  at 
his  childhood,  and  again  he  felt  a  pain,  and  tried  to  dis- 
pel it  and  to  think  of  something  else. 

And  again,  together  with  this  train  of  his  recollections, 
another  train  of  recollections  passed  through  his  soul  as 
to  how  his  disease  increased  and  grew.  Again  it  was  the 
same :  the  farther  back,  the  more  there  was  of  life.  There 
was  more  good  in  life  and  more  of  Life  itself.  Both 
blended. 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILfCH  73 

"  Just  as  my  suffering  is  growing  worse  and  worse,  so 
my  whole  life  has  been  getting  worse  and  worse,"  he 
thought.  There  was  one  bright  point  there  behind,  in 
the  beginning  of  life,  and  then  everything  grows  blacker 
and  blacker,  and  goes  faster  and  faster.  "  In  inverse  pro- 
portion to  the  square  of  the  distance  from  death,"  thought 
Ivan  Ilich.  And  this  representation  of  a  stone  flying 
downward  with  increasing  rapidity  fell  into  his  soul. 
Life,  a'  series  of  increasing  sufferings,  flew  more  and  more 
rapidly  toward  its  end,  a  most  terrible  suffering.  "  I 
fly  — "  He  trembled,  and  shook,  and  wanted  to  resist ; 
but  he  knew  that  it  was  useless  to  resist,  and  again  he 
looked  at  the  back  of  the  divan  with  eyes  weary  from 
looking,  which  could  not  help  but  look  at  w-hat  was  in 
front  of  him,  and  he  waited  and  waited  for  that  terrible 
fall,  push,  and  destruction. 

"  It  is  impossible  to  resist,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  But 
if  I  only  understood  what  it  is  all  for.  And  this  is  im- 
possible. One  might  be  able  to  explain  it,  if  it  could  be 
said  that  I  had  not  lived  properly.  But  that  can  by  no 
means  be  asserted,"  he  said  to  himself,  as  he  recalled  all 
the  lawfulness,  regularity,  and  decency  of  his  life.  "  It  is 
impossible  to  admit  this,"  he  said  to  himself,  smiling  with 
his  lips,  as  though  some  one  could  see  this  smile  of  his 
and  be  deceived  by  it.  "  There  is  no  explanation  !  Tor- 
ment, death  —     Why  ? " 


XI 

Thus  passed  two  weeks.  During  these  weeks  there 
took  place  an  event  which  had  been  desired  by  Ivan  Ilich 
and  his  wife.  Petrishchev  made  a  formal  proposal.  This 
happened  in  the  evening.  On  the  following  day  Praskovya 
r^dorovna  entered  her  husband's  room,  wondering  how 
she  should  announce  F^dor  Petrovich's  proposal  to  Ivan 
IHch,  but  that  very  night  Ivan  Ihch  had  taken  a  turn  for 
the  worst.  Praskovya  Fedorovna  found  him  on  the  same 
divan,  but  in  a  new  position.  He  was  lying  on  his  back 
and  groaning  and  looking  in  front  of  him  with  an  arrested 
glance. 

She  began  to  speak  of  the  medicines.  He  transferred 
his  look  to  her.  She  did  not  finish  saying  what  she  had 
begun,  —  such  malice,  especially  to  her,  was  expressed  in 
this  glance. 

"  For  Christ's  sake,  let  me  die  in  peace,"  he  said. 

She  wanted  to  go  away,  but  just  then  her  daughter 
entered,  and  she  went  up  to  him  to  greet  him.  He  looked 
at  his  daughter  in  the  same  way  as  at  his  wife,  and  in 
reply  to  her  questions  about  his  health  he  said  dryly  to 
her  that  he  would  soon  free  them  all  from  himself.  Both 
grew  silent  and,  after  sitting  awliile,  went  out. 

"  In  what  way  is  it  our  fault  ? "  Liza  said  to  her 
mother.  "  It  is  as  though  we  had  done  something.  I 
am  sorry  for  papa,  but  why  does  he  torment  us  ? " 

The  doctor  arrived  at  the  usual  hour.  Ivan  Ilich 
answered  him,  "  Yes,  no,"  without  taking  his  glance  of 
fury  from  him,  and  finally  said : 

74 


THE   DEATH   OF   IVAN    ILICH  75 

'*  You  know  yourself  that  nothing  will  help  me,  so  let 
it  go." 

"  We  can  alleviate  your  suffering,"  said  the  doctor. 

"  You  cannot  do  that,  either,  —  let  it  go." 

The  doctor  went  into  the  drawing-room  and  informed 
Praskdvya  F^dorovna  that  he  was  in  a  very  bad  state, 
and  that  there  was  one  means,  —  opium,  —  in  order  to 
alleviate  the  sufferings,  which  must  be  terrible. 

The  doctor  said  that  his  physical  suffering  was  terrible, 
and  that  was  true ;  but  more  terrible  than  his  physical 
suffering  was  his  moral  suffering,  and  in  this  lay  his  chief 
agony. 

His  moral  suffering  consisted  in  this,  that  on  that  night, 
as  he  looked  upon  Gerasini's  sleepy,  good-natured  face 
with  its  prominent  cheek-bones,  it  suddenly  occurred  to 
him,  "  What  if  indeed  my  whole  life,  my  conscious  hie, 
was  not  the  right  thing  ?  " 

It  occurred  to  him  that  what  before  had  presented  itself 
to  him  as  an  utter  impossibility,  namely,  that  he  had 
passed  all  his  hfe  improperly,  might  after  all  be  the  truth. 
It  occurred  to  him  that  those  faint  endeavours  at  strug- 
gling against  that  which  was  regarded  as  good  by  persons 
in  superior  positions,  faint  endeavours  which  he  had  im- 
mediately repelled  from  himself,  might  be  real,  while 
everything  else  might  be  the  wrong  thing.  He  tried  to 
defend  all  this  to  himself.  And  suddenly  he  felt  the 
weakness  of  everything  which  he  was  defending,  and 
there  was  nothing  to  defend. 

"  And  if  this  is  so,"  he  said  to  himself,  "  and  I  go  away 
from  hfe  with  the  consciousness  of  having  ruined  every- 
thing which  was  given  me,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to 
mend  it,  what  then  ? " 

He  lay  down  on  his  back  and  began  to  pass  his  life  in 
review  in  an  entirely  new  fashion.  When,  in  the  morn- 
ing, he  saw  the  lackey,  then  his  wife,  then  his  daughter, 
then  the  doctor,  every  one  of  their  motions,  every  word  of 


76  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

theirs  coufirmed  for  him  the  terrible  truth  which  had 
beeu  revealed  to  him  the  night  before.  In  them  he  saw 
himself,  all  that  he  had  been  living  by,  and  saw  clearly 
that  all  that  was  not  the  right  thing,  that  it  was  all  a 
terrible,  huge  deception,  which  concealed  both  life  and 
death.  This  consciousness  increased,  multiplied  tenfold 
his  physical  sufferings.  He  groaned  and  tossed  about  and 
picked  at  liis  clothes.  It  seemed  to  him  that  his  clothes 
choked  and  suffocated  him.     And  for  this  he  hated  them. 

He  was  given  a  big  dose  of  opium  and  he  fell  into 
oblivion,  but  at  dinner  the  same  began  once  more.  He 
drove  all  away  from  himself,  and  tossed  from  one  place 
to  another. 

His  wife  came  to  him,  and  said : 

"  Jean,  my  darling,  do  this  for  me."  ("  For  me  ?  ")  "  It 
cannot  hurt,  and  frequently  it  helps.  Healthy  people 
frequently  do  it." 

He  opened  his  eyes  wide. 

"  What  ?  Communion  ?  What  for  ?  It  is  not  neces- 
sary !     Still  —  " 

She  burst  out  weeping. 

"  Yes,  my  dear  ?  I  will  send  for  our  priest,  —  he  is 
such  a  nice  man." 

"  All  right,  very  well,"  he  muttered. 

When  the  priest  came  and  took  his  confession,  he  soft- 
ened, seemed  to  feel  a  relief  from  his  doulits,  and  so  from 
his  suffering,  and  for  a  moment  was  assailed  by  hope. 
He  began  once  more  to  think  of  his  blind  gut  and  the 
possiljility  of  mending  it.  He  took  his  communion  with 
tears  in  his  eyes. 

When,  after  the  communion,  he  was  put  down  on  the 
bed,  he  for  a  moment  felt  easier,  and  again  there  appeared 
hope  of  hfe.  He  began  to  think  of  the  operation  which 
had  been  proposed  to  him.  "  I  want  to  live,  to  live,"  he 
said  to  himself.  His  wife  came  back  to  congratulate 
him ;  she  said  the  customary  words,  and  added ; 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  /  / 

"  Truly,  are  you  not  feeling  better  ? " 

Without  looking  at  her,  he  said,  "  Yes." 

Her  attire,  her  tigure,  the  expression  of  her  face,  the 
sound  of  her  voice,  —  everything  told  him  one  and 
the  same  thing  :  "  It  is  not  the  right  thing.  Everything 
which  you  have  lived  by  is  a  lie,  a  deception,  which  con- 
ceals from  you  hfe  and  death."  The  moment  he  thought 
so,  there  arose  his  hatred,  and  with  his  hatred  came 
physical,  agonizing  sufferings,  and  with  the  sufferings  the 
consciousness  of  inevitable,  near  perdition.  Something 
new  had  taken  place :  something  began  to  screw  up  and 
shoot,  and  to  choke  him. 

The  expression  of  his  face,  when  he  uttered,  "  Yes,"  was 
terrible.  Having  said  this  "  Yes,"  he  looked  straight  into 
her  face  and  with  unusual  rapidity  for  his  weakness 
turned  his  face  downward,  and  called  out : 

"  Go  away,  go  away,  leave  me  alone ! " 


XII. 

From  this  moment  there  began  that  cry  which  lasted  for 
three  days  and  was  so  terrible  that  it  was  not  possible  to 
hear  it  without  horror  through  two  doors.  At  the  mo- 
ment when  he  answered  his  wife,  he  understood  that  he 
was  lost,  that  there  was  no  return,  that  the  end  had  come, 
the  real  end,  and  yet  his  doubt  was  not  solved,  —  it 
remained  the  doubt  it  had  been. 

"  Oo  !  Oo  !  Oo  !  "  he  cried,  in  various  intonations.  He 
had  begun  to  cry,  "  I  do  not  want  to  ! "  and  continued  to 
cry  the  sound  "  oo." 

During  the  three  days,  in  the  course  of  which  time  did 
not  exist  for  him,  he  fluttered  about  in  that  black  bag 
whither  an  invisible,  invincible  force  was  shoving  him. 
He  struggled  as  a  prisoner  condemned  to  death  struggles 
in  the  hands  of  the  hangman,  knowing  that  he  cannot  be 
saved ;  and  with  every  minute  he  felt  that,  in  spite  of  all 
the  efforts  of  the  struggle,  he  was  coming  nearer  and 
nearer  to  what  terrified  him.  He  felt  that  his  suffering 
consisted  in  his  being  shoved  into  that  })lack  hole,  and 
still  more  in  his  not  being  able  to  get  through  it.  What 
hindered  him  from  crawhng  through  was  the  conscious- 
ness  of  this,  that  his  life  was  good.  This  justification  of 
his  life  grappled  him  and  did  not  allow  him  to  get  on 
and  tormented  him  more  than  anything. 

Suddenly  a  certain  force  pushed  him  in  the  chest  and 
in  the  side,  and  still  more  compressed  his  throat,  and  he 
fell  into  the  hole,  and  there,  at  the  end  of  the  hole,  there 
was  some  light.  What  happened  to  him  was  what 
happens  in  a  railway  car,  when  a  man  thinks  that  he  is 

78 


THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH  79 

riding  forward,  while  he  is  ridiug  backward,  and  suddenly 
discovers  the  real  direction. 

"  Yes,  it  was  all  the  wrong  thing,"  he  said  to  himself, 
"  but  that  is  nothing.  It  is  possible,  it  is  possible  to  do 
the  right  thing.  What  is  the  right  thing  ?  "  he  asked 
himself,  and  suddenly  grew  quiet. 

This  happened  at  the  end  of  the  third  day,  two  hours 
before  his  death.  At  just  this  time  the  little  gymnasiast 
stole  quietly  up  to  his  father,  and  walked  over  to  his  bed. 
The  dying  man  was  crying  pitifully  and  tossing  about  his 
hands.  His  hand  fell  on  the  head  of  the  little  gymnasiast. 
The  little  gymnasiast  caught  it  and  pressed  it  to  his  lips, 
and  burst  out  weeping. 

Just  then  Ivan  Ilich  tumbled  in  and  saw  the  light,  and 
it  was  revealed  to  him  that  his  life  had  not  been  what  it 
ought  to  have  been,  but  that  it  was  stiU  possible  to  mend 
it.  He  asked  himself  :  "  What  is  the  right  thing  ?  "  and 
he  grew  silent,  and  hstened.  Here  he  felt  that  some  one 
was  kissing  his  hand.  He  opened  his  eyes  and  glanced 
at  his  son.  He  was  sorry  for  him.  His  wife  came  up 
to  him.  He  glanced  at  her.  She  looked  at  him  with  a 
desperate  expression,  her  mouth  being  wide  open  and  the 
tears  remaining  unwiped  on  her  nose.  He  was  sorry  for 
her. 

"  Yes,  I  am  tormenting  them,"  he  thought.  "  They  are 
sorry,  but  they  will  be  better  off  when  I  am  dead."  That 
was  what  he  meant  to  say,  but  he  did  not  have  the 
strength  to  utter  it.  "  However,  what  is  the  use  of  talk- 
ing ?  I  must  do,"  he  thought.  He  indicated  his  son  to 
his  wife  with  his  glance,  and  said : 

"  Take  him  away  —  am  sorry  —  and  you,  too  —  " 

He  wanted  to  add,"  Forgive,"  but  said,"  Forgigive,"  and 
being  unable  to  correct  himself,  he  waved  his  hand,  know- 
ing that  who  needed  would  understand. 

Suddenly  it  became  clear  to  him  that  what  had  been 
vexing  him  and  could  not  come  out,  now  was  coming  out 


80  THE    DEATH    OF    IVAN    ILICH 

all  at  once,  from  two  sides,  from  ten  sides,  from  all  sides. 
They  were  to  be  pitied  ;  it  was  necessary  to  do  something 
to  save  them  pain,  to  free  them  and  free  himself  from 
these  sufferings. 

"  How  good  and  how  simple  !  "  he  thought.  "  And  the 
pain  ? "  he  asked  himseK.  "  What  of  it  ?  Well,  pain, 
where  are  you  ?  " 

He  began  to  listen. 

"  Yes,  here  it  is.      Well,  let  it  pain." 

"  And  death  ?     Where  is  it  ?  ' 

And  he  sought  his  former  customary  fear  of  death,  and 
could  not  find  it. 

"  Where  is  it  ?     What  death  ? " 

There  was  no  fear,  because  there  was  also  no  death. 

Instead  of  death  there  was  a  light. 

"  So  this  it  is  !  "  he  suddenly  spoke  out  in  a  loud  voice, 
"  What  joy  !  " 

For  him  all  this  took  place  in  one  moment,  and  the 
significance  of  this  moment  no  longer  changed.  But  for 
those  who  were  present  the  agony  lasted  two  hours  longer. 
Something  palpitated  in  his  heart,  and  his  emaciated  body 
jerked.  Theu  the  palpitation  and  the  rale  grew  rarer  and 
rarer. 

"  It  is  ended  !  "  some  one  said  over  him. 

He  heard  these  words  and  repeated  them  in  his  soul. 

"  Death  is  ended,"  he  said  to  himself.     "  It  is  no  more." 

He  inhaled  the  air,  stopped  in  the  middle  of  his  breath, 
stretched  himself,  and  died. 

March  22,  1886. 


THE   POWER   OF  DARKNESS 

Or,  "  When  the  Claw   Is   Caught  the  Whole   Bird 

Is   Lost" 

1886 


THE   POWER  OF   DARKNESS 


DRAMATIS   PERSONS   OF   ACT   I. 

Peter,  a  rich  peasant,  forty-two  years  of  age  ;  married  for 
the  second  time  ;  sickly. 

Anisya,  his  wife,  thirty-two  years  of  age;  a  dandyish 
woman. 

Akulina,  Peter's  daughter  by  his  first  marriage,  sixteen 
years  of  age ;  hard  of  hearing  and  silly. 

Anyutka,  a  second  daughter,  ten  years  old. 

NiKiTA,  their  hired  hand,  twenty-five  years  old  ;  a  fop. 

Akim,  Nikita's  father,  fifty  years  old  ;  homely,  and  God- 
fearing. 

Matrena,  his  wife,  fifty  years  old. 

Marina,  an  orphan  girl,  twenty-two  years  old. 


ACT  I. 

Tlie  action  takes  place  in  a  large  village,  in  autumn.  The 
scene  represents  the  inside  of  Peters  spacious  hat. 
Peter  is  seated  on  a  bench,  mending  a  horse-collar. 
Anisya  and  Akulina  are  spinning. 

Scene    I.      Peter,   Anisya,    and   Akulina    {the   last   two 

singing  together). 

Peter  (looking  through  the  wi7idoio).  The  horses  have 
crone  away  again.  Before  we  know  it  the  colt  will  be 
killed.  Nikita  !  Oh,  Nikita  !  Are  you  deaf  ?  {Listens. 
To  the  women.)  Stop  your  singing,  —  I  can't  hear  a 
thing ! 

Nikita's  voice,  in  the  yard.     What  ? 

Peter.     Drive  in  the  horses  ! 

Nikita's  voice.     I  will !     Only  give  me  a  chance  ! 

Peter  {shaking  his  head).  Oh,  these  hired  hands  !  If 
I  were  a  well  man,  I  would  not  have  one  for  the  world. 
There  is  only  worry  with  them.  {Gets  up  and  sits  down 
again.)  Nikita !  I  shall  get  no  answer.  I  wish  one 
of  you  would  go.     Akulina,  go  and  drive  them  in ! 

Akulina.     What,  the  horses  ? 

Peter.     What  else  did  I  say  ? 

Akulina.     Right  away.     {Exit.) 

Scene  II.     Peter  and  Anisya. 

Peter.  The  young  scamp  is  not  much  of  a  farmer. 
It  takes  him  an  age  to  do  a  thing. 

Anisya.     You  aren't  very  lively  yourself.     From  the 

84 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  85 

oven  to  the  bench,  that's  as  far  as  you  can  go.  You  are 
only  hard  on  people. 

Peter.  If  I  were  not  hard  on  you,  I  should  not  be 
able  to  find  a  thing  in  a  year.     Oh,  what  people ! 

Anisya.  You  make  one  attend  to  a  dozen  things  at 
once,  and  you  scold  all  the  while.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
command  when  you  are  lying  on  the  oven. 

Peter  (sighing).  If  it  were  not  for  this  sickness  of  mine 
I  should  not  keep  him  a  day. 

Akulina's  voice  hehind  the  scene.  Here,  horsy,  here, 
horsy  !  (One  hears  the  neighing  of  a  colt  and  horses  run- 
ning in  through  the  gate.      The  gate  creaks.) 

Peter.  All  he  knows  is  to  prattle.  Pteally,  I  would 
not  keep  him. 

Anisya  {mocking  him).  I  won't  keep  him.  Move 
about  and  then  talk ! 

Scene  III.     The  same  and  Akulina. 

Akulina  (entering).  I  had  the  hardest  time  driving 
them  in.     The  dappled  gray  — 

Peter.     And  where  is  Nikita  ? 

Akulina.     jSTikita  ?     He  is  standing  in  the  street. 

Peter.     What  is  he  standing  there  for  ? 

Akulina.  What  is  he  standing  there  for  ?  He  is 
standing  around  the  corner,  and  is  talking. 

Peter.  I  can't  get  anything  out  of  her.  With  whom 
is  he  talking  ? 

Akulina  (^not  hearing  him).  Wliat  ?  (Peter  waves  his 
hand  to  Akulina  ;  she  goes  hack  to  her  spinning.) 

Scene  IV.     The  same  and  Anyutka. 

Anyutka  (running  in.  To  her  mother).  Nikita's 
parents  have  come  to  see  him.  Indeed,  they  are  taking 
him  home  to  get  married. 


86  THE    rOWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anisya.     Are  you  telling  the  truth  ? 

Anyutka.  May  I  die  on  the  spot  if  I  am  not !  (Laugh- 
ing.) I  was  going  by  when  Nikita  called  me :  "  Good- 
bye," says  he,  "  Anna  Petrovna  !  Come  to  my  wedding  ! 
I,"  says  he,  "  am  going  away  from  you."  And  he 
laughed. 

Anisya  (to  her  husband).  They  are  in  great  need  of 
you.  There  he  is  going  away  of  his  own  accord.  And 
you  say  :  "  I'll  drive  him  away  ! " 

Peter.     Let  him  go.     I  will  find  somebody  else. 

Anisya.  But  haven't  you  paid  the  money  in  advance  ? 
(Anyutka  walks  up  to  the  door  and  listens  to 
what  they  are  saying.     Exit.) 

Scene  V.     Anisya,  Peter,  and  Akulina. 

Peter  (frowning).  What  money  he  owes  me  he  will 
work  ofi"  in  the  summer. 

Anisya.  Yes,  you  are  only  too  glad  to  let  him  go. 
You  save  so  much.  In  winter  you  want  me  to  do  all  the 
work  by  myself,  like  a  horse.  The  girl  is  not  much  good 
for  work,  and  you  will  be  lying  on  the  oven.  I  know 
you! 

Peter.  What  sense  is  there  in  wagging  your  tongue 
for  notliiug  ? 

Anisya.  The  yard  is  full  of  cattle.  You  did  not  sell 
the  cow,  and  you  have  left  all  the  sheep  for  winter.  There 
is  enough  work  to  do  to  feed  and  water  them,  and  you 
want  to  send  the  hired  hand  away.  I  am  not  going  to  do 
a  man's  work !  I  will  lie  down  on  the  oven,  as  you  do, 
and  let  everything  go  to  perdition,  —  I  don't  care  what 
you  do. 

Peter  (to  Akulina).  Go  for  the  feed !  I  think  it  is 
time. 

Akulina.  For  the  feed?  All  right.  (Puts  on  a  caftan 
and  takes  a  rope.) 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKLESS  87 

Anisya.  I  will  not  work  for  you  1  You  may  be  sure 
I  won't.     Go  and  work  yourself. 

Petek.     Stop.     Don't  carry  on  like  a  crazy  sheep ! 

Anisya.  You  are  yourself  a  mad  dog !  There  is  no 
work  in  you,  and  I  don't  get  any  joy  out  of  you.  You 
do  nothing  but  eat  all  the  time.  A  lazy  dog  you  are,  upon 
my  word. 

Peter  (sjnts  out  and  puts  on  his  coat).  Pshaw,  the 
Lord  be  merciful  to  you !  I  must  go  and  find  out  what 
is  up.     (Exit.) 

Anisya  (crying  after  him).    Rotten,  long-nosed  devil ! 

Scene  VL     Anisya  and  Akulina. 

Akulina.     Why  are  you  scolding  father  ? 

Anisya.     Shut  up,  you  fool ! 

Akulina  (ivalking  up  to  the  door).  I  know  why  you 
are.  You  are  yourself  a  fool,  and  a  dog.  I  am  not  afraid 
of  you. 

Anisya.  What  do  you  say  ?  {Jumps  up  and  looks 
around  for  something  to  throiv  at  her.)  If  you  don't  look 
out  I  will  hit  you  with  the  plough-handle. 

Akulina  (opening  the  door).  You  are  a  dog,  a  devil, 
that's  what  you  are  !  A  devil,  a  dog,  a  dog,  a  devil ! 
(Buns  awag.) 

Scene  VIL     Anisya  (alone). 

Anisya  (in  thought).  "  Come  to  the  wedding,"  says 
he.  What  are  they  up  to  ?  To  marry  him  ?  Look  out, 
Nikita !  If  that  is  your  trick,  I  will  —  I  cannot  live 
without  liim.     I  will  not  let  him. 

Scene  VIII.     Anisya  and  Nikita. 

NiKlTA  (enters,  looking  about  him.  Seeing  that  Anisya 
is  alone,  he  tvalks  over  to  her.    In  a  whisper).     What  am 


88  THE    POWER    OF    DARK'N'ESS 

I  to  do,  my  dear  ?  Father  has  come  to  take  me  away. 
He  commauds  me  to  go  home.  "  We  want  to  marry  you 
by  all  means,"  says  he,  "  and  have  you  stay  at  home." 

Anisya.     Well,  get  married.     What  is  that  to  me  ? 

NiKiTA.  I  declare !  I  was  hoping  to  consult  with 
you,  and  you  tell  me  to  get  married  !  What  is  the  mat- 
ter ?    (  Winking.)     Or  have  you  forgotten  ? 

Anisya.     Get  married.     What  do  I  care  ? 

NiKiTA.  What  are  you  snorting  about  ?  I  declare  ! 
She  won't  let  me  pat  her.  What  is  the  matter  with 
you  ?  ^ 

Anisya.  As  to  your  wishing  to  leave,  go  if  you  want 
to  !  I  don't  need  you  !  That  is  what  I  have  to  say  to 
you. 

NiKiTA.  Stop,  Anisya.  Did  I  say  I  wanted  to  forget 
you  ?  Not  on  my  life.  I  sha'n't  leave  you  for  anything. 
I  was  thinking  like  this :  let  them  marry  me,  but  I  will 
come  back  to  you.  If  they  will  only  not  keep  me  at 
home ! 

Anisya.  You  won't  be  of  much  use  to  me  when  you 
are  married. 

Nikita.  But  what  am  I  to  do,  my  dear  ?  It  is  not 
possible  to  oppose  father's  will. 

Anisya.  You  are  putting  it  on  your  father,  but  it  is 
your  trick.  You  have  been  carrying  on  all  the  time  with 
your  sweetheart,  Marina.  It  is  she  who  has  put  you  on 
to  it.     I  see  now  why  she  came  here  the  other  day. 

NiKiTA.  Marina  ?  What  do  I  care  for  her  ?  I  can't 
help  her  sticking  to  me  ! 

Anisya.  Then  why  did  your  father  come  ?  You  told 
him  to.      You  have  deceived  me  !     ( Weeping.) 

JSTiKiTA.  Anisya,  do  you  believe  in  God,  or  not  ?  I 
have  not  even  dreamt  of  this.  I  have  absolutely  no 
knowledge  of  it.     My  dad  thought  it  all  out  himself. 

Anisya.  If  you  did  not  want  it  yourself,  could  they 
catch  you  in  a  sling  ? 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  89 

NiKiTA.  I  have  considered  that  it  is  impossible  to 
oppose  father's  will,  although  I  have  no  desire  to  marry. 

Anisya.     Eefuse,  and  that's  all. 

NiKiTA.  There  was  a  fellow  who  did  refuse,  and  so 
they  gave  him  a  walloping.  I  do  not  want  that  either : 
they  say  it  is  tickhsh  — 

Anisya.  Stop  jesting.  Listen,  Nikita:  if  you  are 
going  to  take  IMarina  for  a  wife,  I  do  not  know  what  I 
shall  do  to  myself.  I  will  take  my  life !  I  have  sinned, 
and  have  violated  the  Law,  but  that  cannot  be  remedied 
now.     If  you  go  away,  I  will  do  harm  to  myself  — 

Nikita.  Why  should  I  want  to  go  away  ?  I  could 
have  gone  long  ago,  if  I  had  wanted  to.  The  other  day 
Ivan  Sem^nych  offered  me  a  coachman's  place.  What  a 
fine  life  that  would  be !  But  I  did  not  go,  for  I  consid- 
ered that  others  hke  me.  If  you  did  not  love  me,  that 
would  be  a  different  matter. 

Anisya.  Keep  this  in  mind  !  The  old  man  can't  live 
long,  and  so,  I  think,  w^e  might  be  able  to  cover  up  our 
sin.  I  thought  I  might  wed  you,  and  you  would  be  the 
master. 

Nikita.  What  is  the  use  saying  this  ?  What  differ- 
ence does  it  make  to  me  ?  I  work  as  though  for  i^yself. 
My  master  likes  me,  and,  of  course,  my  mistress  loves  me. 
But  I  can't  help  women's  liking  me,  —  that's  all. 

Anisya.     Will  you  love  me  ? 

NiKiTA  {embracing  her).  Like  this  1  You  are  deep  in 
my  heart  — 

Scene  IX.  The  same  and  Matrena  {entering  and  cross- 
ing herself  before  the  images  for  a  long  time.  Nikita 
and  Anisya  rush  away  from  each  other). 

Matrena.  I  have  neither  seen  nor  heard  a  thing. 
You  have  been  disporting  with  the  woman,  —  what  of  it  ? 
A  calf,  you  know,  likes  to  play,  too.     Why  not  ?     You 


90  THE   POWER   OF   DARKNESS 

are  young  yet.  My  son,  the  master  has  been  asking  for 
you  in  the  yard. 

NiKiTA.     I  just  came  to  get  the  axe. 

Matrena.  I  know,  I  know,  my  friend,  what  kind  of 
an  axe  you  mean.  That  kind  of  an  axe  is  mostly  near 
women. 

NiKiTA  (bending  doivn  and  picking  up  the  axe).  Well, 
mother,  do  you  really  intend  marrying  me  off  ?  I  con- 
sider it  all  useless.     And,  then,  I  have  no  desire. 

Matrena.  My  darling,  what  is  the  use  of  marrying  ? 
You  had  better  go  on  living  as  you  do,  but  it  is  the  old 
man  who  wants  it.  Go,  my  dear,  we  will  fix  matters 
without  you. 

NiKiTA.  This  is  remarkable :  now  I  am  to  marry,  and 
now  again  I  am  not.     I  can't  make  it  out  at  all.    {Exit.) 

Scene   X.     Anisya  and  Matrena. 

Anisya.  Well,  Aunt  Matrena,  do  you  really  want  to 
get  him  married  ? 

Matrena.  What  are  we  to  marry  him  with,  my  dear  ? 
We  have  no  means,  you  know.  My  old  man  is  just  a- 
talking,  without  any  sense  whatsoever.  He  keeps  insist- 
ing that  he  should  marry.  But  this  is  a  matter  above 
his  mind.  Horses,  you  know,  do  not  gallop  away  from 
oats,  and  people  ought  not  to  look  out  for  other  things, 
while  they  have  something  good  at  hand,  —  just  so  it  is 
in  this  case.     Can't  I  see  (winking)  what  is  up  here  ? 

Anisya.  Why  should  I  conceal  it  from  you.  Aunt 
Matrena  ?  You  know  everything.  I  have  sinned  :  I  love 
your  son. 

Matrena.  You  did  tell  me  some  news  :  Aunt  Matrena 
did  not  know  it.  But  I  tell  you,  woman.  Aunt  Matrena 
is  sly,  oh,  so  sly.  Let  me  tell  you  my  dear,  —  Aunt 
Matrena  can  see  a  yard  below  ground.  I  know  every- 
thing, my   dear !     I   know   what  women    want  sleeping 


THE   POWER   OF   DAKKNESS  91 

powders  for,  I  have  brought  some.  ( Unties  the  knot  in 
her  handkerchief  and  takes  out  some  powders  in  a  piece  of 
paper.)  What  is  good  for  me,  I  see ;  and  what  I  ought 
not  to  know,  I  neither  see  nor  hear.  That's  the  way  it  is 
with  me.  Aunt  Matrena  was  once  young  herself.  You 
see,  one  must  know  how  to  get  along  with  a  fool.  I  know 
all  the  ropes.  I  see,  my  dear,  your  old  man  is  pretty  far 
gone.  What  strength  has  he  ?  Stick  a  fork  into  him, 
and  no  blood  will  come  out.  I  think  you  will  bury 
him  by  spring.  You  will  have  to  take  somebody  on  your 
farm.  And  is  not  my  son  as  good  a  peasant  as  any  ? 
Then,  what  advantage  could  1  gain  from  driving  him  away 
from  a  good  thing  ?  You  do  not  suppose  I  am  my  son's 
enemy  ? 

Anisya.     If  he  only  would  not  leave  us. 

Mateena.  He  will  not,  my  birdie.  That  is  all  non- 
sense. You  know  my  old  man.  His  brain  is  all  cracked. 
At  times  he  tills  it  up,  and  braces  it  with  a  post  that 
you  can't  knock  out  from  under  him. 

Anisya.     What  caused  all  this  ? 

Mateena.  You  see,  my  dear,  my  boy  has  a  weakness 
for  women,  and,  it  must  be  said,  he  is  a  fine-looking 
fellow.  So,  you  see,  he  has  worked  on  the  raiboad.  At 
that  time  a  certain  orphan  girl  was  serving  there  as  a 
cook,  and  she  was  all  the  time  after  him. 

Anisya.     Marina  ? 

Mateena.  The  same,  —  may  she  be  paralyzed.  I  do 
not  know  whether  anything  happened  or  not,  only  my 
old  man  found  it  out.  He  heard  it  from  others,  or  she 
herself  told  him  — 

Anisya.     But  she  was  bold,  —  that  accursed  one  ! 

Mateena.  So  my  old  man  —  the  stupid  fellow  he  is 
—  insists  upon  my  son's  marrying  her  so  as  to  cover  the 
sin.  "  We  will  take  our  boy  home,"  says  he,  "  and  get 
him  married."  I  tried  every  way  to  dissuade  him,  but  all 
in  vain.     Well,  thought  I,  let  it  be.     I  will  try  in  a  dif- 


92  THE    POWER   OF   DARKNESS 

fereut  manner.  These  fools,  my  dear,  have  to  be  enticed. 
You  have  to  pretend  to  agree  with  them,  but  the  moment 
it  comes  to  business,  you  switch  them  off.  A  woman,  you 
see,  comes  a-flying  down  from  the  oven,  having  thought 
out  a  hundred  thoughts  —  so  how  is  he  to  find  it  out? 
"  Yes,  old  man,"  says  I,  "  that  is  good ;  only  we  must  con- 
sider it  well.  Come,"  says  I,  "  let  us  go  to  our  son,  and 
let  us  consider  the  matter  with  Peter  Ignatych.  Let  us 
hear  what  he  has  to  say."  And  this  is  why  we  have 
come. 

Anisya.  Oh,  aunty,  what  will  happen  now  ?  If  his 
father  commands  him  ? 

Matrena.  Commands?  To  the  dogs  with  his  com- 
mand. Don't  have  any  fears !  It  will  not  happen.  I 
will  soon  thresh  out  the  whole  matter  with  your  old  man, 
so  that  nothing  will  be  left  of  it.  This  is  the  very  reason 
why  I  have  come  aloug  with  him.  How  stupid  it  would 
be  for  me  to  have  my  son  marry  a  slut,  while  he  is  living 
in  happiness  here,  and  happiness  is  ahead  of  him !  I  am 
not  such  a  fool  as  all  that. 

Anisya.  Marina  has  been  coming  to  see  him  here,  too. 
Would  you  believe  it,  aunty,  —  when  I  was  told  that  he 
was  to  get  married,  I  felt  as  though  somebody  had  stuck 
a  knife  into  my  heart.     I  thought  he  had  a  liking  for  her. 

Matrena.  Not  at  all,  my  dear.  He  is  not  such  a 
fool.  He  would  not  think  of  loving  a  homeless  vaga- 
bond. You  must  know  Nikita  is  a  clever  fellow.  But 
you,  my  dear,  have  no  fear !  We  sha'n't  take  him  away 
in  a  lifetime.  We  will  not  marry  him  off.  As  long  as 
you  let  him  have  money,  let  him  stay  here. 

Anisya.  I  feel  that  if  Nikita  went  away  I  should  not 
want  to  live. 

.  Matrena.  That  is  the  way  with  young  people  !  And 
it  is  no  wonder.  You  are  a  healthy  young  woman,  and 
have  to  live  with  such  a  worthless  rag  — 

Anisya.     Believe   me,  aunty,  I  am   tired,  dreadfully 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  93 

tired  of  my  old  man,  that  long-nosed  dog.  I  wish  my 
eyes  did  not  see  him. 

Matrena.  Yes,  that  is  the  way  it  goes.  Come,  see 
this,  (/ti  a  ivhisper,  looking  arovMcl.)  You  see  I  went 
to  see  an  old  man  for  some  powders,  and  he  gave  me  two 
kinds.  Look  here.  "  This,"  says  he,  "  is  a  sleeping  pow- 
der. Give  him  one,"  says  he.  "  It  will  make  him  sleep 
so  hard  that  you  can  do  anything  you  please.  And  this," 
says  he,  "  is  such  a  drug  that  if  you  give  it  in  a  drink  it 
cannot  be  discovered,  but  its  strength  is  great.  It  is  to  be 
given  seven  times,"  says  he,  "  and  every  time  a  pinchful. 
Eepeat  it  seven  times.  And  freedom,"  says  he,  "  will  soon 
come  to  her." 

Anisya.     Oh,  oh,  oh  !     What  is  this  ? 

Matrena.  "  It  leaves  no  traces,"  says  he.  He  took  a 
rouble  for  it.  "  I  can't  do  it  for  less,"  says  he.  Because, 
you  see,  it  is  hard  to  get.  My  dear,  I  gave  him  my 
money  for  it.  I  thought  to  myself  I  would  take  it  down 
to  Anisya,  whether  she  wanted  it  or  not. 

Anisya.  Oh,  oh !  But  maybe  something  bad  will 
come  of  it  ? 

Matrena.  What  bad  can  there  be,  my  dear  ?  It 
would  be  different  if  your  husband  were  a  healthy  man ; 
but  as  it  is  he  barely  lives.  He  is  not  a  live  fellow. 
There  are  many  such. 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  wretched  head  !  I  am  afraid,  aunty, 
there  might  be  some  sin  in  it.     No,  I  do  not  like  it. 

Matrena.     I  can  take  it  back. 

Anisya.  Are  these  to  be  dissolved  in  water,  like  the 
other  ? 

Matrena.  "  In  tea,"  says  he,  "  it  is  better.  It  can't 
be  detected,"  says  he.  "  They  leave  no  smell,  nothing." 
He  is  a  clever  fellow. 

Anisya  (taking  the  powders).  Oh,  my  wretched 
head !  Would  I  have  thought  of  such  things  if  my  hfe 
were  not  so  hard  ? 


94  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Matkena.  Don't  forget  the  rouble.  I  promised  the 
old  fellow  I  would  bring  it  to  him.  He  is  worried 
about  it. 

Anisya.  Of  course.  {Goes  to  a  coffer  and  conceals  the 
poivders.) 

Matkena.     You  must  keep  them    so,  my  dear,  that 

people  do  not  find  them  out.    If,  God  forfend,  something 

should    be    discovered,    say    they    are    for    cockroaches. 

{Takes  the  rouble.)    They  are  also  good  for  cockroaches  — 

"^ (^Interrupts  her  speech.) 

Scene  XL     The  same,  Peter,  and  Akim. 

Akim  (enter.     Crosses  himself  before  the  image). 

Peter  {enter.  Sits  down).  So  what  is  it,  Uncle 
Akim? 

Akim.  'Twere  better,  Ignatych,  'twere  better,  so  to 
speak  —  for,  otherwise,  you  know,  it  may  lead  to  badness 
—  I  should  hke,  so,  to  take  my  son  away,  for  work.  And 
if  you  permit  it,  so  —    'Twere  better  — 

Peter.  All  right,  all  right.  Sit  down,  and  let  us  have 
a  chat.  {Ahim  sits  down.)  Well  ?  Do  you  want  to  get 
him  married  ? 

Matrena.  As  for  marrying,  Peter  Ignatych,  we  can 
put  it  off.  You  know  yourself,  Ignatych,  what  want  we 
live  in.  We  have  barely  enough  to  live  on,  so  how  are 
we  to  get  him  married  ?     How  are  we  to  marry  him  ? 

Peter.     Consider  what  is  best. 

Matrena.  There  is  no  hurry  about  getting  married. 
It  is  like  this  :  it  is  not  a  raspberry  that  will  drop  off. 

Peter.     It  is  a  good  thing  to  get  married. 

Akim.  I  should  like  to,  so  to  speak  —  Because,  so  to 
speak  —  there  is  some  work  in  the  city,  some  profitable 
work  I  have  there,  you  know. 

Matrena.  Work  !  To  clean  privies.  When  he  came 
home  the  other  day,  pshaw,  I  just  vomited  and  vomited ! 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  95 

Akim.  That  is  so :  at  first,  so  to  speak,  it  takes  your 
breath  away ;  but  when  you  get  used  to  it,  it  is  all  right. 
It  is  just  like  the  swills,  so  to  speak,  very  much  like  it. 
And  as  to  the  smell,  so  to  speak,  fellows  like  us  must  not 
be  offended  by  it.  We  can  change  our  clothes,  for  all 
that.  I  wanted  Nikita  to  go  home  and,  so  to  speak,  look 
after  things.  Let  him  look  after  the  house,  and  so  I  will 
earn  something  in  town  — 

Peter.  You  want  to  leave  your  son  at  home,  —  that 
is  all  right.  But  how  about  the  money  you  have  taken 
on  account  ? 

Akim.  That's  so,  that's  so,  Ignatych.  You  have  said 
that  correctly,  so  to  speak,  because  if  you  have  hired 
yourself  out  you  have  sold  yourself,  and  you  have  to 
abide  by  it,  so  to  speak.  But,  if  he  could  get  married, 
so  to  speak,  would  you  let  him  off  for  awhile  ? 

Petee.     There  is  no  objection  to  that. 

Matrena.  Only  we  do  not  agree  upon  it.  I  will  lay 
everything  before  you,  Peter  Ignatych,  as  I  would  before 
God,  You  will  judge  between  my  old  man  and  me.  He 
has  taken  it  into  his  head  to  marry  him  off.  And  to 
whom  is  it  he  marries  him  ?  If  she  w^ere  a  decent  girl, 
I  would  not  be  my  son's  enemy ;  but  this  one  has  a 
fault. 

Akim.  Now  this  is  not  right.  You  are  accusing  the 
girl  for  nothing,  so  to  speak,  for  nothing.  Because  this 
girl  has  been  wronged  by  my  son  do  you  see.  The  same 
girl,  you  see. 

Peter.     How  has  she  been  wronged  ? 

Akim.  It  appears,  so  to  speak,  she  has  been  wronged 
by  Nikita,  —  by  Nikita,  you  see. 

Matrena.  Stop  a  moment.  I  can  express  myself 
better  than  you,  so  let  me  tell  it.  You  know  yourself 
that  our  son  used  to  work  on  the  railroad  before  he  came 
to  your  house.  Now  a  girl,  Marina  by  name,  who  was 
a  cook  for  the  workmen,  —  she  is  not  very  clever,  —  has 


96  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

been  after  him.  This  same  girl  accuses  our  son  Nikita 
of  having  betrayed  her, 

Peter.     That  is  not  good. 

Matkena.  She  is  herself  not  much  good.  She,  the 
slut,  is  running  around  among  people. 

Akim.  Again,  old  woman,  you  are  not  saying  so,  not 
at  all  so,  so  to  speak,  not  so  — 

Matrena.  All  my  eagle  here  can  say  is  "  so,  so,"  but 
what  that  "  so  "  is,  he  does  not  know  himself.  Peter  Igna- 
tych,  ask  other  people  about  this  girl,  and  you  will  hear 
the  same  as  I  have  been  telling  you.  She  is  a  homeless 
vagabond. 

Peter  {to  Akim).  If  it  is  like  that.  Uncle  Akim,  there 
is  no  reason  for  liis  marrying  her.  A  daughter-in-law  is 
not  a  bast  shoe  that  you  can  take  off  your  leg. 

Akim  (excitedly).  It  is  false,  old  woman,  just  so,  what 
you  say  about  the  girl  is  false.  Because  the  girl  is  very 
good,  so,  very  good,  so  to  speak,  I  am  sorry  for  her,  so  to 
speak,  for  the  girl. 

Matrena.  He  is  just  like  Maremyana  the  mendicant, 
who  weeps  for  the  whole  world,  and  sits  breadless  at 
home.  You  are  sorry  for  the  girl,  but  you  are  not  sorry 
for  your  son.  Tie  her  around  your  neck,  and  walk 
about  with  her.  What  good  is  there  in  talking  such 
nonsense  ? 

Akim.     No,  it  is  not  nonsense. 

Matrena.     Don't  interrupt  me  !     Let  me  finish  ! 

Akim  (interrupting  her).  No,  it  is  not  nonsense.  You 
are  coming  back  to  yourself,  so  to  speak,  whether  you  are 
speaking  of  the  girl  or  of  yourself ;  you  are  coming  back 
to  yourself,  but  God  will  come  back  to  His  own,  that's  so. 
And  so  it  is  in  this  case. 

Matrena.  Oh,  it  only  makes  my  tongue  ache  to  speak 
with  you. 

Akim.  She  is  a  hard-working  girl,  and,  so  to  speak, 
looking  weU  after  herself,  so  to  speak.     And,  so,  in  our 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  97 

poverty  she  would  be  a  gi-eat  hand  for  us.  The  wedding 
expense  is  not  great ;  but  the  wrong  done  is  great  to  the 
girl,  so  to  speak.  The  girl  is  an  orphan,  that's  it.  And 
there  was  a  wrong  done. 

Matrena.     They  all  tell  the  same  story. 

Anisya.  Uncle  Akim,  you  ought  to  hear  what  we 
women  have  to  say.     We  can  tell  you  something. 

Akim.  Lord,  0  Lord  !  Is  not  the  girl  a  human  being  ? 
Before  God,  so  to  speak,  she  is  a  human  being,  too.  What 
do  you  think  ? 

Matkena.     There  is  no  stopping  him  — 

Peter.  Uncle  Akim,  you  cannot  believe  everything 
the  girls  say.  The  young  fellow  is  alive.  He  has  some- 
thing to  say  about  it.  Let  us  send  for  him  and  ask  him 
whether  it  is  true.  He  will  not  ruin  a  soul.  Call  the 
young  fellow !  {Anisya  gets  up.)  Tell  him  his  father 
wants  to  see  him.     {Anisya  exit.) 

Scene  XII.     The  same,  without  Anisya. 

Mateena.  Now,  our  protector,  this  was  a  wise  judg- 
ment to  let  the  son  decide.  Nowadays  they  don't  get 
people  married  by  force.  The  young  man  ought  to  be 
considered.  He  will  not  be  willing  to  marry  her  for  any- 
thing in  the  world,  for  that  would  only  disgrace  him.  It 
is  my  opinion  that  he  had  bettej:  stay  with  you  and 
serve  his  master.  There  is  no  reason  for  taking  him 
away  in  the  summer,  —  we  can  hire  somebody.  You 
give  us  ten  roubles,  and  let  him  stay  with  you. 

Peter.  That  is  still  ahead.  Let  us  take  every- 
thing in  order.  First  end  one  thing,  and  then  take  up 
another. 

Akim.  I  have  been  saying  all  this,  Peter  Ignatych, 
because,  so  to  speak,  things  happen  like  this :  You,  so  to 
speak,  arrange  matters  so  as  to  be  best  for  yourself,  and 
so  forget  about  God.     You  think  it  is  better  to  look  out 


98  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

for  yourself,  but,  behold,  you  have  only  burdened  your- 
self with  trouble.  We,  so  to  speak,  think  that  it  is  better 
without  considering  God,  but  it  is  worse. 

Peter.     Of  course,  we  must  think  of  God. 

Akim.  It  is  really  worse ;  but  if  everything  is  done 
according  to  the  Law,  according  to  God's  way,  it,  so  to 
speak,  makes  your  heart  glad.  It,  so  to  speak,  was  before 
me  like  a  dream.  And  so  I  guessed,  so  to  speak,  that  I 
had  better  get  my  son  married,  in  order,  so  to  speak,  to 
save  him  from  sin :  and  so  he  will  be  at  home,  so 
to  speak,  according  to  the  Law,  while  I  will  try,  so  to 
speak,  to  find  something  to  do  in  town.  It  is  a  work 
of  love,  and  it  is  proper.  According  to  God's  way,  so  to 
speak,  it  is  better.  And  she  is  an  orphan  at  that.  For 
example,  last  year  they  took  some  wood  from  the  clerk 
in  just  such  a  manner.  They  thought  they  would  cheat 
him.  And  so  they  did,  but  God,  so  to  speak,  they  did 
not  cheat,  well,  and  — 

Scene  XIIL     The  same,  Mkita,  and  Anyutka. 

NiKiTA.  Did  you  call  me  ?  (Sits  down,  and  takes  out 
his  tobacco^ 

Petek  {softly  and  reproacJifully).  Don't  you  know 
the  proprieties  ?  Your  father  sent  for  you,  and  you  take 
out  your  tobacco,  and  seat  yourself.  Come  here,  and 
stand  up ! 

(Nikita  stands  up  near  the  table,  leaning  care- 
lessly against  it,  and  smiling.) 

Akim.  There  is,  so  to  speak,  Nikita,  a  complaint 
against  you. 

Nikita.     Who  complains  ? 

Akim.  Who  ?  A  girl,  an  orphan,  so  to  speak,  com- 
plains. There  is  a  complaint  against  you,  so  to  speak, 
from  that  same  Marina. 

Nikita  (laughing).    Marvellous  !    What  kind  of  a  com- 


THE   POWER    OF   DARKNESS  99 

plaint  is  it  ?  Who  has  told  you  about  it  ?  Maybe  she 
herseK  ? 

Akim.  I  am  now  putting  the  questions,  so  to  speak ; 
and  you  must  give  the  answers,  so  to  speak.  Did  you  tie 
yourself,  so  to  speak,  with  the  girl  ? 

NiKiTA.  I  can't  positively  make  out  what  it  is  you 
are  asking. 

Akim.  That  is  foolishness,  so  to  speak,  foolishness,  I 
say ;  was  there  any  foohshness  between  her  and  you,  so  to 
speak  ? 

NiKiTA.  How  do  you  mean  it?  Feeling  lonely,  I 
passed  the  time  with  the  cook :  I  would  play  the  accor- 
dion, and  she  would  dance.  What  other  foohshness  do 
you  mean  ? 

Peter.  Nikita,  don't  beat  about  the  bush.  Answer 
straight  to  your  father's  questions. 

Akiji  {solemnly).  Nikita !  You  may  conceal  it  from 
men,  but  you  will  not  conceal  it  from  God.  Nikita,  you 
must  not,  so  to  speak,  lie  !  She  is  an  orphan,  so  to  speak, 
and  it  is  easy  to  offend  her.  She  is  an  orphan,  so  to 
speak.     You  tell  me  how  it  was. 

Nikita.  I  have  nothing  to  tell.  I  am  positively  tell- 
ing you  everything,  and  there  is  nothing  to  tell.  {Getting 
excited.)  Of  course,  she  may  tell  anything  she  pleases. 
Say  anything  you  wish,  —  it  does  not  affect  me.  Why 
did  she  not  tell  on  F^dka  Mikishkin  ?  How  is  it  nowa- 
days ?  A  person  may  not  jest  even.  Nothing  prevents 
her  talking. 

Akim.  O  Nikita,  look  out !  The  lie  will  come  to  the 
surface.     Was  there  anything  or  not  ? 

Nikita  {aside).  I  declare  he  is  persistent!  {To  Akim.) 
I  told  you  that  I  know  nothing.  There  has  been  nothing 
between  us.  {Angrily.)  May  Christ  not  allow  me  to  come 
off  this  plank.  {Crosses  himself.)  I  know  absolutely 
nothing.  {Silence.  Nikita  proceeds  more  excitedly.)  Why 
do  you  insist  on  my  marrying  her  ?    This  is  really  a  scandal 


100  THE    POWEE    OF    DARKNESS 

There  is  no  law  to  compel  a  man  to  marry  against  his 
will.     I  have  sworn  that  I  know  nothing. 

Matrena  {to  her  hushand).  You  foolish,  stupid  man ! 
You  believe  everything  they  tell  you.  You  have  dis- 
graced your  sou  for  nothing.  Better  let  him  stay  with 
the  master,  as  he  has  been  doing.  The  master  will  now 
give  us  ten  roubles  in  advance.     When  the  time  comes  — 

Peter.     Well,  how  is  it  now.  Uncle  Akim  ? 

Akim  (clicking  his  tongue,  to  his  son).  Look  out, 
Nikita !  A  tear  of  offence  does  not  flow  past,  but,  so  to 
speak,  upon  a  man's  head.  Look  out,  or  the  same  will 
happen  with  you. 

NiKiTA.  I  have  nothing  to  look  out  for.  You  had 
better  look  out  yourself.     (Sits  down?) 

Anyutka.  I  shall  run  and  tell  mother.  {Runs 
away?) 

Scene  XIV.     Peter,  Akim,  Matrena,  and  Nikita. 

Matrena  {to  Peter).  So  this  is  all  there  is  to  it,  Peter 
Ignatych.  He  is  a  riotous  fellow :  if  something  gets  into 
his  head,  you  can't  drive  it  out.  We  have  troubled  you 
in  vain.  Let  my  son  live  with  you  as  he  has  heretofore. 
Keep  my  son,  —  he  is  your  servant. 

Peter.     How  is  it  now.  Uncle  Akim  ? 

Akim.  I  did  not  force  my  son,  —  if  only  it  is  not  so ! 
I  wanted,  so  to  speak  — 

Matrena.  You  don't  know  yourself  what  you  are 
talking  about.  Let  him  stay  here,  as  he  has  until  now. 
Our  son  does  not  want  to  go  to  the  house.  And  we  do 
not  need  him :  we  shall  get  along  without  him. 

Peter.  I  must  say  this  much.  Uncle  Akim :  if  you 
take  him  away  for  the  summer,  I  do  not  need  him  in 
winter.     If  he  is  to  stay  here,  it  must  be  for  a  year. 

]\Iatrena.  He  will  hire  out  for  a  year.  If  w'e  need 
anybody  during  harvest  time,  we  shall  hire  somebody. 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  101 

Let  our  son  stay  here,  and  you  give  us  ten  roubles 
now  — 

Petek.     Is  it,  then,  for  another  year  ? 

Akim  (sighiny).  Well,  if  it  has  to  be,  I  suppose,  so  to 
speak. 

Matrena.  Again  for  a  year,  from  the  Saturday  of  St. 
Demetrius.  You  will  not  offend  us  about  the  price,  but 
in  the  meantime  let  us  have  ten  roubles.  Excuse  us  now. 
{Rises  and  hows.) 

Scene   XV.     The  same,  Anisya,  and  Anyutka. 

Anisya  {sits  down  at  a  distance  away). 

Peter.  Well  ?  If  it  is  thus,  let  us  go  to  the  inn  and 
celebrate  the  occasion.  Come,  Uncle  Akim,  and  have 
some  brandy. 

AkIxM.     I  do  not  drink,  that  is,  no  liquor. 

Peter.     Well,  then  you  will  have  some  tea. 

Akim.     Tea  is  my  weakness.     I  will  take  some. 

Peter.  And  the  women,  too,  will  drink  tea.  You, 
Nikita,  drive  in  the  sheep,  and  pick  up  the  straw. 

NiKiTA.  All  right.  {All  exeunt,  except  Nikita.  It  is 
groiviny  dark.) 

Scene    XVI.     Nikita  alone. 

NiKiTA  {liyhting  a  ciyarette).  I  declare,  they  insisted 
upon  my  telling  them  how  I  passed  my  time  with  the 
girls.  It  would  take  a  long  time  to  tell  about  that. 
"  Marry  her,"  says  he.  If  I  were  to  marry  them  all,  I 
should  have  plenty  of  wives.  What  sense  is  there  in  my 
marrying,  when  I  am  living  better  than  any  married  man, 
and  people  envy  me  ?  It  was  as  though  somebody  pushed 
me  to  swear  by  the  holy  image.  And  thus  I  put  a 
stop  to  the  whole  matter.  They  say  it  is  dangerous  to 
swear  to  an  untruth.  That  is  all  foolishness,  —  nothing 
but  talk.     That  is  all. 


102  THE    POWER    OF    DAEKNESS 


Scene  XVII.     Nikita  and  Akulina. 

Akulina  {enter,  in  caftan.  Puts  down  the  rope,  takes 
off  her  caftan,  and  goes  into  the  storeroom).  Why  don't 
you  strike  a  light  ? 

Nikita.  To  look  at  you  ?  I  can  see  you  without  a 
light. 

Akulina.     Go  to ! 


Scene  XVIII.     The  same  and  Anyutka. 

Anyutka  (running  in,  in  a  whisper  to  NiMta). 
Nikita,  go  quickly,  there  is  some  one  asking  for  you 
truly. 

Nikita.     Who  ? 

Anyutka.  Marina  from  the  railroad.  She  is  standing 
around  the  corner. 

Nikita.     You  are  fibbing. 

Anyutka.     Truly. 

Nikita.     What  does  she  want  ? 

Anyutka.  She  wants  you  to  come  out.  "  I  have  but 
a  word  to  say  to  Nikita,"  says  she.  I  began  to  ask  her 
what  it  was,  but  she  would  not  tell  me.  She  asked  me 
whether  it  was  true  that  you  are  going  to  leave  us.  I  told 
her  that  it  was  not  true,  that  your  father  wanted  to  take 
you  home  and  get  you  married,  but  that  you  had  refused, 
and  would  stay  another  year  with  us.  Then  says  she : 
"  Send  him  to  me,  for  Christ's  sake.  I  must  by  all  means 
speak  one  word  to  him."  She  has  been  waiting  for  quite 
awhile.     Go  to  her. 

Nikita.     God  be  with  her,  —  I  won't  go. 

Anyutka.  She  says  that  if  you  do  not  come  she 
will  go  into  the  house  to  you.  "  Truly,  I  will,"  says 
she. 

Nikita.  Never  mind.  She  will  stay  there  awhile, 
and  then  she  will  go  away. 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  103 

Anyutka.  She  asked  me  whether  they  wanted  to 
marry  you  to  AkuKna. 

Akulixa  (walks  up  to  NiHta,  hack  of  her  spinning- 
wheel).     Who  is  to  marry  Akulina  ? 

Anyutka.     Nikita. 

Akulina.     I  declare !    Who  says  so  ? 

Nikita.  Evidently  people  say  so.  {Looks  at  her  and 
laughs.)     Akulina,  will  you  marry  me  ? 

Akulina.  You  ?  Sometime  ago  I  might  have  mar- 
ried you  perhaps,  but  now  I  won't. 

Nikita.     Why  not  now  ? 

Akulina.     Because  you  will  not  love  me. 

Nikita.     Why  not  ? 

Akulina.     Because  you  are  told  not  to.     (Laughs.) 

Nikita.     Who  tells  me  not  to  ? 

Akulina.  My  stepmother.  She  is  scolding  all  the 
time,  and  all  the  time  watching  you. 

Nikita  (laughing).    I  declare  !    But  you  are  shrewd. 

Akulina.  Who,  I  ?  Why  shrewd  ?  Am  I  blind  ?  She 
gave  father  a  terrible  tongue-lashing  to-day,  that  big- 
snouted  witch.     {ExAt  to  the  storeroom.) 

Anyutka.  Nikita!  Look  there.  {Looks  through  the 
window.)  She  is  coming.  Truly,  she  is.  I  am  going 
away.      {Exit.) 

Scene  XIX.     Nikita,  Akulina  {in  the  storeroom),  and 

Marina. 

Makina  {enter).     What  are  you  doing  with  me  ? 

Nikita.     What  am  I  doing  ?     Nothing. 

Maeina.     You  want  to  abandon  me. 

Nikita  {getting  up,  angrily).  WTiat  good  is  there  in 
your  coming  ? 

Maeina.     Ah,  Nikita ! 

Nikita.  Eeally,  you  are  all  queer  —  What  did  you 
come  for  ? 


104  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Marina.    Nikita ! 

NiKiTA.  What  about  Nikita  ?  I  am  Nikita.  "What  do 
you  want  ?     Come  now,  talk  ! 

Marina.     I  see  you  want  to  give  me  up  and  forget  me. 

Nikita.  What  is  there  to  remember  ?  You  don't 
know  yourseK.  There  you  were  standing  around  the 
corner,  and  you  sent  Anyutka  for  rue.  I  did  not  come, 
so  you  ought  to  have  known  that  1  did  not  want  you,  very 
simply.     Go  away  now  ! 

Marina.  You  don't  want  me  !  Now  you  don't  want 
me.  And  I  believed  you  that  you  would  love  me.  First 
you  ruin  me,  and  then  you  do  not  want  me. 

Nikita.  You  are  saying  all  this  to  no  purpose  and  in 
vain.  You  have  been  talking  to  my  father,  too.  Do  me 
a  favour  and  go  away. 

Marina.  You  know  yourself  that  I  have  not  loved 
anybody  but  you.  I  would  not  feel  any  worse  for  it,  if 
you  did  not  marry  me.  I  am  not  guilty  of  anything 
before  you,  so  why  do  you  no  longer  love  me  ?     Why  ? 

Nikita.  There  is  no  sense  in  threshing  out  all  this. 
Go  away  !     0  foolish  women  ! 

Marina.  I  am  not  pained  because  you  have  deceived 
me,  having  promised  to  marry  me,  but  because  you  no 
longer  love  me.  And  not  so  much  because  you  no  longer 
love  me  as  because  you  have  exchanged  me  for  another,  — 
I  know  for  whom. 

Nikita  {angrily  walks  up  to  her).  What  good  is  there 
in  discussing  matters  with  a  woman  ?  She  won't  listen 
to  reason.  Go  away,  I  say,  or  something  bad  will  come 
of  it. 

Marina.  Something  bad  ?  Well,  you  will  beat  me  ? 
Strike  me  !     Don't  turn  your  face  away.     0  Nikita ! 

Nikita.  It  is  not  good.  People  might  come  upon  us. 
What  good  is  there  in  such  useless  talk  ? 

Marina.  So  this  is  the  end.  What  has  been  is  not 
to  be.     You  command  me  to  forget.     Remember,  Nikita ! 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  105 

I  had  guarded  my  maiden  honour  hke  the  apple  of  my 
eye ;  you  have  ruined  me  for  nothing,  —  you  have  de- 
ceived me.  You  have  not  taken  pity  on  an  orphan  (weep- 
ing) ;  you  have  abandoned  me.  You  have  killed  me,  but 
I  wish  you  no  evil.  God  be  with  you !  If  you  find  some 
one  better,  you  will  forget  me ;  if  some  one  worse,  you 
will  think  of  me  —  You  will  think  of  me,  Nikita ! 
Good-bye,  if  it  has  to  be  so,  I  have  loved  you  so  much ! 
Good-bye  for  the  last  time.  ( Wants  to  embrace  him,  and 
grasps  his  head.) 

Nikita  (tearing  himself  away).  Oh,  what  a  bother 
you  are  !  If  you  do  not  go  away,  I  will,  and  you  can  stay 
here. 

Maeina  (crying  aloud).  You  are  a  beast  1  (/w  the 
door.)  God  will  not  give  you  happiness !  {Goes  away 
weeping. ) 

Scene  XX.     Nikita  and  Akulina. 

Akulina  (coming  out  of  the  storeroom).  You  are  a 
dog,  Nikita  ! 

Nikita.     How  so  ? 

Akulina.     How  she  wept !     ( Weeps.) 

Nikita.     What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? 

Akulina.  What  ?  You  have  wronged  her.  You  will 
.  wrong  me  the  same  way,  you  dog!  (^Goes  into  the  store- 
room.) 

Scene  XXL     Nikita  alone. 

Nikita  (^after  a  silence).  It  is  a  muddle.  I  love 
women  like  sugar ;  but  when  you  have  sinned  with  them 
it  is  terrible  1 

Curtain. 


DRAMATIS   PERSONS    OF   ACT   11. 


Peter. 

NlKITA. 

Anisya. 

Matrena. 

Akulina. 

Sponsor,  a  neighbour. 

Anyutka. 

People. 

ACT   II. 

The  scene  represents  a  street  and  Peter's  hut.  On  the  left 
of  the  spectators  is  the  hut  in  two  parts,  and  the  vesti- 
bule, tvith  a  porch  in  the  middle ;  on  the  right  are  the 
gate  and  a  corner  of  the  yard.  In  tlie  corner  of  the 
yard  Anisya  is  beating  hemp.  Six  months  have  passed 
since  the  first  act. 

Scene  I.     Anisya  alone. 

Anisya  {stops  working,  and  listens).  He  is  again  growl- 
ing.    He  must  have  climbed  down  from  the  oven. 

Scene  II.    Anisya  and  Akulina  {enter,  tvith  pails  on  a 

yoke). 

Anisya.     He  is  calling.     Go  and  see  what  is  the  matter 
with  him  !     Hear  him  howling  ! 
Akulina.     What  about  you  ? 
Anisya.     Go,  I  tell  you  !     {Akulina  goes  into  the  hut.) 

Scene  III.     Anisya  alone. 

Anisya.  He  is  wearing  me  out :  he  will  not  tell  me 
where  the  money  is,  and  that  is  the  end  of  it.  The  other 
day  he  was  in  the  vestibule,  so  he  must  have  hidden  it 

100 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  107 

there.  Now  I  do  not  know  myself  where.  He  is  evidently 
afraid  to  part  from  it.  It  must  be  somewhere  in  the 
house.  If  only  I  could  find  it.  He  did  not  have  it  with 
him  yesterday.     He  has  completely  worn  me  out. 

Scene   IV.    Anisya  and  Akulina  (who  comes  out,  tying  her 
kerchief  on  her  head). 

Anisya.     Where  are  you  going  ? 

Akulina.  Where  ?  He  told  me  to  call  Aunt  Marfa. 
"  Go  and  call  sister,"  says  he.  "  I  am  dying,"  says  he,  "  and 
I  want  to  tell  her  something." 

Anisya  (aside).  He  is  calling  his  sister.  Oh,  my 
wretched  head  1  He,  no  doubt,  wants  to  give  it  to  her. 
What  am  I  to  do  ?  Oh  \  (To  Akulina.)  Don't  go! 
Where  are  you  going  ? 

Akulina.     For  aunty. 

Anisya.  Don't  go,  I  say.  I  will  go  myself,  and  you 
take  the  washing  to  the  river.  Else  you  will  not  get 
done  before  evening. 

Akulina.     But  he  told  me  to  go. 

Anisya.  Go  where  I  tell  you.  I  told  you  I  would  go 
myself  for  Marfa.     Take  the  shirts  down  from  the  fence. 

Akulina.  The  shirts  ?  But  I  am  afraid  you  won't  go. 
He  told  me  to. 

Anisya.     I  told  you  I  would.     Where  is  Anyutka  ? 

Akulina.     Anyutka  ?     She  is  watching  the  calves. 

Anisya.  Send  her  here :  the  calves  won't  run  away. 
(Akulina  takes  ujp  the  washing  and  goes  out.) 

Scene  V.     Anisya  alone. 

Anisya.  If  I  don't  go,  he  will  curse  me.  If  I  do,  he 
will  give  his  sister  the  money.  All  my  labours  will  be 
lost.  I  don't  know  what  to  do.  My  head  is  bursting. 
(Contimies  to  work.) 


108  THE    POWEK    OF    DAKKXESS 

Scene  VI.     i^nisya  and  Matr^na  (entering  ivith  a  staff 
and  a  bundle,  as  though  from  a  journey). 

Mateena.     God  bless  you,  my  dear  ! 

Anisya  (looking  around,  throivs  down  her  ivo7'k  and 
claps  her  hands  from  joy).  I  did  not  expect  you,  aunty. 
God  has  sent  me  a  precious  guest  in  proper  time. 

Matrena.     What  is  up  ? 

Anisya.     I  am  all  mixed  up.     It  is  just  terrible ! 

Matrena.     I  understand  he  is  still  alive. 

Anisya.  Don't  mention  it.  He  is  neither  alive  nor 
dead. 

Matrena.     Has  he  given  up  his  money  to  any  one  ? 

Anisya.  He  has  just  sent  for  his  sister  Marfa.  No 
doubt,  he  wants  to  talk  to  her  about  the  money. 

Matrena.  Of  course.  But  has  he  not  in  the  mean- 
time given  it  to  anybody  ? 

Anisya.  No.  I  have  been  watching  him  hke  a 
hawk. 

Matrena.     Where  is  it  ? 

Anisya.  He  will  not  tell,  and  I  cannot  find  out.  He 
is  hiding  it  now  in  one  place,  now  in  another,  and  I  can't 
do  anything  in  Akulina's  presence.  She  is  a  silly  girl, 
but  she  keeps  a  sharp  lookout.  Oh,  my  head !  I  am  all 
worn  out. 

Matrena.  Oh,  my  dear,  if  he  gives  the  money  away 
to  any  oue  but  you,  you  will  have  to  weep  all  your  life. 
They  will  kick  you  out  of  the  farm  with  nothing.  You 
have  worried  your  life  away  with  an  unpleasant  man,  and 
now  you  will  have  to  go  a-begging  as  a  widow. 

Anisya.  Don't  say  that,  aunty  !  My  heart  is  acliing, 
and  I  do  not  know  what  to  do,  and  there  is  nobody  who 
can  advise  me.  I  told  Nikita  about  it,  but  he  is  afraid 
to  take  part  in  it.  He  told  me  yesterday  that  it  was 
under  the  floor. 

Matrena.     Well,  did  you  go  to  see  ? 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  109 

Anisya.  It  is  impossible,  —  he  is  there  himself.  I 
notice  that  he  sometimes  has  it  on  his  person,  and  some- 
times hides  it. 

Matkexa.  Remember,  woman :  once  you  make  a 
mistake,  you  will  not  correct  it  in  a  lifetime.  {In  a 
•whisper.)     Well,  did  you  give  him  the  strong  tea  ? 

Anisya.  Oh  !  (  Wants  to  answer,  hut,  seeing  her  neigh- 
hour,  groivs  silent.) 

Scene  VII.     The  same  and  Sponsor  (ivho  passes  near  the 
hut  and  listens  to  the  voice  calling  in  the  house). 

Sponsor  (to  Anisya).  Friend  !  Anisya,  oh,  Anisya  I 
Your  man  is  calling ! 

Anisya.  He  is  just  coughing,  though  it  sounds  as 
though  he  were  calling.     He  is  in  a  pretty  bad  shape. 

Sponsor  (walking  up  to  3fatrena).  Good  day,  mother  ! 
Whence  does  God  bring  you  ? 

Matrena.  From  the  farm,  my  dear.  I  have  come  to 
see  my  son  and  to  bring  him  some  shirts.  One  naturally 
thinks  of  one's  own  child. 

Sponsor.  Yes,  that  is  so.  (To  Anisya.)  Friend,  I 
wanted  to  bleach  the  linen,  but  1  thought  it  was  too  early 
yet.     The  people  have  not  begun  to  bleach  yet. 

Anisya.     What  is  the  use  in  hurrying  ? 

Matrena.     Well,  has  he  made  his  confession  ? 

Anisya.     Certainly.     The  priest  was  here  yesterday. 

Sponsor  (to  Matrena).  I  saw  him  yesterday,  and  I 
can't  see  what  his  soul  is  holding  on  to.  He  is  so 
haggard.  The  other  day,  motherkin,  he  was  almost  dead, 
and  they  placed  him  under  the  images.  They  were  already 
lamenting  over  him,  and  were  getting  ready  to  wash  him. 

Anisya.  He  came  to  and  got  up  again.  Now  he  is 
walking  about. 

Matrena.  Well,  are  you  going  to  give  him  the  ex- 
treme unction  ? 


110  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anisya.  People  ask  us  to.  If  he  is  alive  to-morrow, 
we  will  send  for  the  priest. 

Sponsor.  It  must  be  hard  for  you,  Anisya !  The 
proverb  says  not  in  vain :  Not  he  who  is  ailing  is  sick, 
but  he  who  watches  over  the  ailment. 

Anisya.     If  there  were  only  an  end  to  it ! 

Sponsor.  Of  course.  It  is  no  small  matter  to  see  him 
dying  for  a  year.     He  has  tied  your  hands. 

Matrena.  Bitter  is  a  widow's  lot.  It  is  all  right  if 
she  is  young,  but  who  will  pity  her  in  her  old  age  ?  Old 
age  is  no  joy.  Look  at  me  !  I  have  walked  but  a  short 
distance,  and  I  am  so  tired  that  my  feet  are  numb.  Where 
is  my  son  ? 

Anisya.  He  is  ploughing.  Come  in.  We  shall  have 
the  samovar  ready,  and  you  will  ease  your  heart  with 
some  tea. 

Matrena  (sits  doivn).  I  am  dreadfully  tired,  my  dear 
ones.  You  must  be  sure  and  give  him  the  extreme  unction. 
People  say  it  is  good  for  the  soul. 

Anisya.     Yes,  we  shall  send  for  him  to-morrow. 

Matrena.  It  will  be  better  so.  We  have  had  a  wed- 
ding, my  dear. 

Sponsor.     What,  a  wedding  in  spring  ? 

Matrena.  There  is  evidently  good  sense  in  the  prov- 
erb :  Night  is  too  short  for  a  poor  man  to  marry.  Sem^n 
Matvy^evich  has  married  Marina. 

Anisya.     So  she  has  found  her  happiness  ! 

Sponsor.  He  is  a  widower,  so  she  has  married  him  for 
the  children. 

Matrena.  There  are  four  of  them.  What  decent  girl 
would  marry  him  ?  So  he  has  taken  her.  She  is  happy. 
We  drank  a  glass,  —  you  see  it  was  not  strong  liquor,  — 
because  they  poured  it  out  for  me. 

Sponsor.     I  declare  !     Has  he  any  means  ? 

Matrena.     So  far  they  are  getting  on  well. 

Sponsor.     That's  so,  who  would  want  to  marry  a  man 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  111 

with  children  ?     Take,  for  example,  our  Mikhaylo.     He  is 
a  tine  man,  motherkin  — 

A  Peasant's  Voice,  Oh,  Mavra,  whither  has  the 
devil  taken  you  ?  Go  and  drive  in  the  cow.  {Neigh- 
bour exit.) 

Scene  VIII.     Anlsya  and  Matr^na. 

Matrena  (ivhile  the  neiylihour  is  leaving,  she  speaks 
in  an  even  voice).  She  has  been  married  sinfully,  my 
dear  ;  at  least  the  silly  woman  will  not  be  think- 
ing about  Nikita.  {Suddenly  changing  her  voice  to  a 
whisper.)  She  is  gone !  Well,  did  you  give  him  the 
tea? 

Anisya.  Don't  mention  it.  I  wish  he  would  die  with- 
out it.  He  is  not  dying  anyway,  and  I  have  taken  a 
sin  upon  my  soul.  Oh,  my  head  !  Why  did  you  give  me 
those  powders  ? 

Matrena.  What  about  the  powders  ?  My  dear,  those 
are  sleeping  powders,  and  why  not  give  them  ?  There  is 
no  harm  in  them. 

Anisya.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  sleeping  powders, 
but  of  the  other,  the  whitish  powders. 

Matrena.     But  those,  my  dear,  are  medicinal  powders. 

Anisya  {sighing).  I  know ;  but  it  makes  me  tremble. 
He  has  worn  me  out. 

Matrena.  Well,  how  many  times  have  you  given  it 
to  him  ? 

Anisya.     Twice. 

Matrena.     Did  they  have  any  effect  ? 

Anisya.  I  put  my  lips  to  the  tea,  —  it  is  slightly  bit- 
ter. He  drank  it  with  the  tea,  and  said  :  "  I  loathe  the 
tea,  too."  And  I  said :  "  Everything  tastes  bitter  to  an 
ill  man."     But  it  made  me  shudder,  aunty. 

Matrena.  Don't  think  of  it !  It  is  not  good  to  think 
of  it. 


112  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

AisiSYA.  I  wish  you  had  not  given  it  to  me,  and  had 
not  tempted  me  to  sin.  It  makes  me  shudder  when  I 
think  of  it.     Why  did  you  give  them  to  me  ? 

Matkena.  Don't  say  that,  my  dear!  Christ  be  with 
you  !  Don't  put  it  on  me  !  Woman,  it  will  not  do  to 
take  it  off  a  guilty  head  and  put  it  on  an  innocent 
one.  When  it  comes  to  anytliing,  I  shall  stand  aside.  I 
sha'n't  know  a  thing  :  I  will  kiss  the  cross  that  I  have  not 
given  any  powders  and  that  I  have  not  seen  any,  and  that 
I  have  heard  of  no  powders.  Woman,  think  for  yourself ! 
We  were  talking  the  other  day  about  you  and  how  you  are 
suffering.  Your  stepdaughter  is  a  fool,  and  your  husband 
is  rotten,  —  a  real  curse.  What  will  one  not  do  with  such 
a  life  ? 

Anisya.  I  sha'n't  deny  it.  Such  a  life  will  only  make 
me  hang  myself  or  kill  him.     What  life  is  this  ? 

Matrena.  That's  it.  There  is  no  time  to  lose.  You 
must  find  the  money,  and  give  him  the  tea  to  drink. 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  wretched  head !  I  do  not  know  my- 
self what  to  do,  and  I  feel  so  much  afraid :  I  wish  he 
would  die  by  himself.  I  do  not  wish  to  take  the  sin  upon 
me. 

Matrena  (angrily).  Why  does  he  not  reveal  his 
money?  Does  he  intend  to  take  it  with  liim,  so  that 
no  one  may  get  it  ?  Is  it  proper  ?  God  forfend  that 
such  a  lot  of  money  should  be  lost  for  nothing.  Is 
not  this  a  sin  ?  What  is  he  doing  ?  Is  it  not  a  shame 
to  look  at  him  ? 

Anisya.  I  do  not  know.  He  has  worn  me  out  com- 
pletely. 

Matrena.  Why  don't  you  know  ?  The  thing  is  clear 
enough.  If  you  don't  look  out  now,  you  will  repent  it  all 
your  life.  He  will  give  the  money  to  his  sister,  and  you 
wiU  be  left  without  any.. 

Anisya.  Oh,  oh !  He  has  sent  for  her,  and  I  have  to 
go  and  fetch  her ! 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  113 

Matkena.  Wait  awhile !  First  have  the  samovar 
ready.  We  will  fill  him  with  the  tea,  and  then  we  will 
look  him  all  over,  —  maybe  we  shall  find  the  money. 

Anisya.  Oh,  oh !  I  am  afraid  something  might 
happen. 

Matrena.  What  will  happen  ?  What  are  you  wast- 
ing your  time  for  ?  You  are  having  your  eyes  all  the 
time  on  the  money,  but  it  does  not  get  into  your  hands. 
Go  and  do  as  I  tell  you  I 

Anisya.     So  I  will  have  the  samovar  made. 

Matrena.  Go,  my  dear,  and  do  things  so  as  not  to 
have  cause  for  regret  later.  That's  it !  {Anisya  walks 
away ;  Matrena  calls  after  her.)  By  the  way,  don't  tell 
Nikita  about  it.  He  is  silly  about  such  things  !  God 
forfend  that  he  should  find  out  about  the  powders.  God 
knows  what  he  will  do  if  he  hears  of  it.  He  is  compas- 
sionate :  he  could  not  kill  a  chicken  even.  Don't  tell 
him  !  He  will  not  consider  it  rightly.  (Stops  in  terror  ; 
Peter  appears  on  the  threshold.) 

Scene  IX.     The  same  and  Peter  {holding  on  to  the  wall^ 
crawls  out  on  the  porch  and  calls  in  a  weak  voice). 

Peter.  Will  you  ever  hear  me  ?  Oh,  oh  !  Anisya,  who 
is  here  ?  {Falls  down  on  the  bench.) 

Anisya  {coming  out  from  around  the  corner).  What 
did  you  come  out  for  ?  Why  did  you  not  stay  where  you 
were  ? 

Peter.  Has  the  girl  gone  for  Marfa  ?  'Tis  hard  — 
Oh,  if  death  would  only  come ! 

Anisya.  She  is  busy :  I  sent  her  to  the  river.  Give 
me  a  chance,  and  I  will  go  there  myself. 

Peter.  Send  Anyiitka.  Where  is  she  ?  Oh,  'tis  hard ! 
Oh,  my  death  ! 

Anisya.     I  have  sent  for  her. 

Peter.     Oh,  where  is  she  ? 


114  THE    POWER   OF   DARKNESS 

Anisya.     Where  is  she  ?     The  paralysis  take  her  ! 

Petp:k.  Oh,  I  have  no  strength.  It  burns  me  within. 
I  feel  as  though  they  were  turning  an  auger  within  me. 
Why  did  you  abandon  me  like  a  dog  ?  There  is  nobody 
to  give  me  a  drink.     Oh,  send  Anyutka  to  me  ! 

Anisya.     Here  she  is.     Anyutka,  go  to  father ! 

Scene  X.     The  same  and  Anyutka  {running  in.     Anisya 
walks  around  the  corner). 

Peter.  Go,  oh,  to  Aunt  Marfa !  Tell  her,  father 
wants  her  to  come :  he  needs  her. 

Anyutka.     Well  ? 

Peter.  Wait.  Tell  her  I  need  her  at  once.  Tell 
her  I  am  dying.     Oh,  oh ! 

Anyutka.  I  will  take  my  kerchief  and  will  go  there 
at  once,     (Exit  running.) 

Scene  XL     Peter,  Anisya,  and  Matr^na. 

Matrena  {winking).  Well,  woman,  remember  your 
business  !  Go  into  the  hut  and  hunt  everywhere  !  Hunt, 
as  a  dog  hunts  for  fleas  !  Turn  everything  upside  down, 
and  I  will  go  through  him  here  at  once. 

Anisya  {to  Matrena).  I  have  more  courage  when  you 
are  around.  ( Walks  up  to  the  porch.  To  Peter.)  Don't 
you  want  the  samovar  ?  Aunt  Matrena  has  come  to  see 
her  son,  —  so  you  drink  tea  with  her. 

Peter.  All  right,  have  it  made !  {Anisya  goes  into 
the  vestibule.) 

Scene  XII.      Peter  and  Matrena  {walking  over   tc    the 

porch). 

Peter.     Good  day  I 

Matrena.  Good  day,  benefactor!  Good  day,  my  dear! 
You  are  evidently  sick.     My  old  man  is  very  sorry  for 


THE    POWER   OF   DARKXESS  115 

you.  He  told  me  to  go  and  find  out  how  you  were.  He 
sent  his  regards,     (^oivs  again.) 

Peter.     I  am  dying. 

Matkena.  As  I  look  at  you,  Ignatych,  I  see  that 
suffering  is  not  abroad  in  the  woods,  but  keeping  close  to 
people.  You  are  thin,  my  dear,  very  thin,  as  I  see.  Sick- 
ness does  not  make  one  look  better,  that  is  evident. 

Peter.     My  death  has  come. 

Matrexa.  Well,  Peter  Ignatych,  that  is  God's  will. 
You  have  confessed,  and  you  will  receive  the  extreme 
unction,  if  God  grants  it.  You  have  a  clever  wife,  thank 
God,  and  you  will  be  buried  in  honour,  and  mass  will  be 
said  for  you.  And  my  son  will  in  the  meantime  look 
after  the  house  as  much  as  he  can. 

Peter.  There  is  no  one  to  whom  I  can  give  an  order ! 
The  woman  is  not  reliable,  and  busies  herself  with  foohsh 
things.  I  know  all —  I  know —  The  girl  is  silly  and 
young.  I  have  fixed  all  this  house,  but  there  is  no  one 
to  take  care  of  it.     It  is  a  pity.     (Groans.) 

Matrena.  If  there  is  anything  about  money  matters, 
you  can  order  others  — 

Peter  {to  Anisya  in  the  vestibule).  Has  Anyutka 
gone  ? 

Matrena  (aside).     I  declare,  he  has  not  forgotten  it. 

Anisya  (in  the  vestibule).  She  has  gone  long  ago.  Go 
into  the  house  !     I  will  take  you  in. 

Peter.  Let  me  sit  here  for  the  last  time  !  The  air  is 
close  within.  It  is  hard  for  me —  Oh,  I  am  all  burning 
up  inside  —    If  death  would  only  come  ! 

Matrena.  If  God  does  not  take  away  the  soul,  it  will 
not  fly  away  by  itself.  God  has  power  over  life  and 
death,  Peter  Ignatych.  You  can't  foresee  death.  There 
are  cases  when  a  man  gets  up  again.  There  was  once  a 
man  in  our  village,  who  was  almost  dead  — 

Peter.  No.  I  feel  that  I  am  going  to  die  to-day. 
(Leans  back  and  closes  his  eyes.) 


116  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 


Scene  XIII.     The  same  and  Anisya. 

AnIsya  (enter).  "Well,  will  you  go  in,  or  not  ?  I  am 
tired  waiting  for  you.     Peter,  oh,  Peter ! 

Matrena  (walks  away  and  beckons  with  her  finger  to 
Anisya).     Well  ? 

Anisya  (walks  down  from  the  porch,  to  Matrena). 
Nothing. 

Matrena.  Have  you  looked  everywhere  ?  Under  the 
floor  ? 

Anisya.  Nothing  there,  either,  Mayhe  in  the  loft. 
He  was  climbing  there  yesterday. 

Matrena.  Look  for  it,  look  for  it  more  carefully  than 
ever,  as  though  licking  it  clean  with  your  toDgue.  I  see 
he  will  die  to-day  anyway :  his  nails  are  blue,  and  his 
face  is  ashen  gray.     Is  the  samovar  ready  ? 

Anisya.     It  will  boil  in  a  minute. 


Scene  XIV.  The  same  and  Nikita  (coming  from  the 
other  side.  If  possible  he  rides  on  a  horse  to  the  gate. 
He  does  not  see  Peter). 

Nikita  {to  his  mother).  Good  day,  mother !  Are  you 
all  well  at  home  ? 

Matrena.  Thank  God  we  are  alive  and  have  some- 
thing to  eat. 

Nikita.     Well,  how  is  the  master  ? 

Matrena.  Softly,  —  he  is  sitting  there.  {Points  to  the 
porch.) 

Nikita.     Well,  let  him  sit !     What  do  I  care  ? 

Peter  (opening  his  eyes).  Nikita,  oh,  Nikita,  come  here  ! 
(^Nikita  walks  over  to  him.    Anisya  whispers  to  Matreiia.) 

Peter.     Why  did  you  come  back  so  soon  ? 

Nikita.     I  have  done  the  ploughing. 

Peter.  Have  you  ploughed  up  the  strip  back  of  the 
bridge  ? 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  117 

NiKiTA.     It  is  too  far  to  go  there. 

Peter.  Too  far  ?  It  is  farther  from  the  house.  You 
will  have  to  go  there  especially,  —  so  you  might  have 
done  it  at  once.  {Aiiisya,  standing  a  distance  off,  is 
listening.) 

Matkena  (coming  up).  Oh,  son,  why  don't  you  try  to 
do  better  for  your  master  ?  Your  master  is  ill,  and  is 
depending  on  you ;  you  ought  to  exert  yourself  for  him 
as  for  a  father.  Why  don't  you  serve  him  as  I  told  you 
to? 

Peter.  So  you  had  better  —  oh !  —  dig  up  the 
potatoes,  and  the  women  —  oh !  —  will  pick  them 
over. 

Anisya  {aside).  So  he  wants  me  to  go,  too.  He  wants 
to  send  us  all  away,  because  he  has  the  money  with  him. 
He  wants  to  hide  it  somewhere. 

Peter.  Because  —  oh !  —  it  will  soon  be  time  to  set 
them  out,  and  they  will  be  rotten.  Oh,  I  have  no  more 
strength.     {Rises.) 

Matrena  {runs  up  on  the  porch  and  supports  Peter). 
Shall  I  take  you  to  the  house  ? 

Peter.     Yes.     {Stops.)     Nikita ! 

NiKiTA  {angrily).     What  else  is  it  ? 

Peter.  I  won't  see  you  again  —  I  shall  die  to-day  — 
Forgive  me,  for  Christ's  sake,  forgive  me  if  I  have  sinned 
before  you  —  I  have  sinned  in  deeds  and  words  —  Yes, 
I  have.     Forgive  me. 

Nikita.  There  is  nothing  to  forgive.  I  am  sinful 
myself. 

Matrena.     0  son,  show  more  feeling ! 

Peter.     Forgive  me,  for  Christ's  sake  —     (  Weeps.) 

Nikita  {snuffling).  God  will  forgive  you.  Uncle 
Peter.  I  have  not  been  offended  by  you.  I  have  not 
been  wronged  by  you.  You  forgive  me,  for  I  may  be 
more  sinful  than  you.  {Weeps.  Peter  goes  away  moan- 
ing.    Matrena  supports  him.) 


118  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Scene  XV.     Nikita  and  Anisya. 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  wretched  head !  There  is  something 
behind  his  words.  ( Walks  over  to  NiMta.)  You  said  that 
the  money  was  under  the  floor,  but  I  did  not  fiud  it  there. 

Nikita  (weeping,  does  not  ansiver).  I  have  never 
been  wronged  by  him.     See  what  I  have  done  to  him  ! 

Anisya.     Stop  that.     Where  is  the  money  ? 

Nikita  (angrily).    Who  knows  ?    Look  for  it  yourself ! 

Anisya.     You  are  dreadfully  compassionate. 

Nikita.  I  am  sorry  for  him,  I  am  so  sorry.  How 
he  wept !     Oh ! 

Anisya.  I  declare,  you  are  soft-hearted !  A  good 
person  you  have  found  to  pity !  He  has  been  scolding 
you  and  even  now  he  ordered  me  to  drive  you  away  from 
the  farm.     You  had  better  pity  me. 

Nikita.     What  am  I  to  pity  you  for  ? 

Anisya.     He  will  hide  the  money,  and  then  die. 

Nikita.     No,  he  won't. 

Anisya.  0  Nikita !  He  has  sent-  for  his  sister,  —  he 
wants  to  give  it  to  her.  It  will  be  our  misfortune.  How 
shall  we  live  if  he  gives  the  money  away  ?  They  will 
send  me  away  from  the  farm.  You  ought  to  help  me  in 
this.  Did  you  not  tell  me  that  he  climbed  into  the  loft 
yesterday  ? 

Nikita.  I  saw  him  coming  out  of  it;  but  I  do  not 
know  where  he  put  the  money. 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  head  !  I  will  go  and  look  there. 
(NiMta  walks  avjay.) 

Scene  XVI.  The  same  and  Matr^na  (comes  out  of  the 
hut.  Walks  down  the  steps  to  Anisya  and  Nikita,  in 
a  whisper). 

Matrena.  Don't  go  anywhere !  He  has  the  money 
on  his  person.      He  has  it  on  his  baptismal  cross. 


THE    POWEK    OF    DARKNESS  119 

Anisya.     Oh,  my  wretched  head  ! 

Matkena.  If  you  miss  the  opportunity  now,  you 
might  as  well  ftok  for  it  under  the  eagle's  right  wing. 
His  sister  will  come,  and  then  good-bye. 

Anisya.  If  she  comes,  he  will  give  it  to  her.  What 
am  I  to  do  ?     Oh,  my  head  ! 

Matkena.  What  are  you  to  do  ?  Look  here :  the 
samovar  is  boiling  now,  so  you  go  and  fix  the  tea  and 
pour  in  (in  a  whisjjci^)  the  w^hole  lot  of  it.  He  will  drink 
a  cup,  and  then  you  take  it  away.  Don't  be  afraid !  He 
will  not  tell. 

Anisya.     It  makes  me  tremble ! 

Matrena.  Don't  discuss  now.  Do  it  right  away, 
while  I  am  on  the  lookout  for  his  sister.  Don't  make  a 
blunder !  Take  the  money  and  bring  it  here,  and  Nikita 
will  hide  it ! 

Anisya.     Oh,  my  head  !     How  am  I  to  begin  it  ? 

Matrena.  I  tell  you  not  to  discuss  now.  Do  as  I 
tell  you,  Nikita! 

Nikita.     What  ? 

Matrena.  You  stay  here !  Sit  down  on  the  mound 
for  awhile,  —  you  will  be  needed. 

Nikita  (waving  his  hand).  What  these  women  will 
think  out!  They  w411  positively  ruin  me!  Go  to !  I 
will  go  and  dig  out  the  potatoes. 

Matrena  (takes  his  hand).     I  tell  you  to  stay  ! 

Scene  XVII.     The  same  and  Anyutka  (enter). 

Anisya.     Well  ? 

Anyutka.  She  was  in  her  daughter's  garden.  She 
will  be  here  at  once. 

Anisya.     What  shall  we  do  if  she  comes  ? 

Matrena  (to  Anisya).  You  will  have  plenty  of  time. 
Do  as  I  tell  you  ! 

Anisya.     I  do  not  know  what.     I  know  nothing, — 


120  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

everything  is  mixed  in  my  head.  Anyutka !  Go,  darling, 
to  the  calves !  They  may  have  ruu  away.  Oh,  I  wou't 
have  the  courage. 

Matrena.  Go  !  The  samovar  is  running  over  by  this 
time. 

Anisya.     Oh,  my  wretched  head  !     {Exit.) 

Scene  XVIII.     Matr(^na  and  Nikita. 

Matrena  {goes  up  to  her  son).  Yes,  my  son !  {Sits 
down  on  the  mound,  near  him.)  Your  affair,  too,  has  to 
be  considered.    It  must  not  be  left  out. 

Nikita.    What  affair  ? 

Matrena.     Namely,  how  you  are  to  get  on  in  the  world. 

Nikita.  How  to  get  on  in  the  world  ?  I  shall  live 
just  as  other  people  do. 

Matrena.     The  old  man  is  going  to  die  to-day. 

Nikita.  If  he  does,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  be  his. 
What  is  that  to  me  ? 

Matrena  {looking  all  the  time  at  the  porch  wliile  speak- 
ing). Oh,  my  son!  A  living  person  thinks  of  living 
tilings.  My  dear,  it  takes  much  thinking  here.  I  have 
been  in  all  kinds  of  places,  attending  to  your  affairs ;  I 
have  worn  out  my  legs  running  errands  for  you.  Don't 
f on^et  me  for  it ! 

Nikita.     What  is  it  you  attended  to  ? 

Matrena.  To  your  affair,  to  your  fate.  If  I  did  not 
attend  to  it  in  time,  nothing  would  come  of  it.  You  know 
Ivan  Mos^ich  ?  I  go  to  see  him  now  and  then.  The 
other  day  I  attended  to  some  business  of  his ;  I  stayed 
there  awhile  and  chatted  with  him.  "  Explain  to  me,  Ivan 
Mos6ich,"  says  I,  "  a  certain  matter.  For  example,"  says 
I,  "  there  is  a  widower,  and  he  has  taken  unto  himseK  a 
second  wife,  and,  let  us  say,  he  has  children  by  both 
wives.  Suppose  now,"  says  I,  "  the  man  dies ;  can  an- 
other man,"  says  I,  "  step  in  and  marry  the  widow  ?     Can 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  121 

he,"  says  I,  "  marry  off  the  daughters  and  himself  remain 
on  the  farm  ? "  "  He  can,"  says  he,  "  only,"  says  he,  "  it 
will  take  much  trouble  and  money,"  says  he ;  "  it  can  be 
done,  —  but  without  money,"  says  he,  "  there  is  no  use 
trying." 

NiKiTA  (laughing).  Of  course,  if  you  give  them  money. 
Everybody  wants  money. 

Matrena.  Well,  my  dear.  I  told  him  the  whole  affair. 
"  In  the  first  place,"  says  he,  "  your  son  must  inscribe 
himself  in  that  village  ;  for  this  you  need  money  to  treat 
the  old  men  to  drinks.  Then  they  will  put  down  their 
signatures.  Everything,"  says  he,  "  has  to  be  done  cau- 
tiously." Look  here  !  {Takes  out  a  paj^er  from  her  ker- 
chief.) He  has  written  up  a  paper.  Read  it,  for  you 
know  how  to  read.     {Nikita  reads  it.) 

XiKiTA.  This  paper  is  an  official  document.  There  is 
no  great  wisdom  in  it. 

Mateena.  Listen  to  w'hat  Ivan  Mos^ich  has  told  me. 
"  Above  everything  else,"  says  he,  "  let  him  not  miss  the 
money.  If  she  does  not  get  the  money,"  says  he,  "  they 
will  not  let  her  get  a  son-in-law.  Money,"  says  he,  "  is 
the  chief  thing."  So  look  out !  My  son,  the  business 
will  soon  begin. 

XiKiTA.  What  do  I  care  ?  It  is  her  money,  so  let  her 
trouble  herself  about  it. 

Matrexa.  My  son,  you  do  not  judge  rightly.  Can  a 
woman  consider  rightly  ?  Suppose  even  she  takes  the 
money,  how  is  she  to  dispose  of  it  ?  That  is  not  a 
woman's  business,  but  a  man's.  You  can  hide  it,  and  all 
such  things.     You  have  more  sense  in  matters  like  this. 

NiKiTA.     The  reasoning  of  you  women  is  not  coiTect ! 

Matrexa.  Why  not  correct?  You  only  take  the 
money.  Then  the  woman  will  be  in  your  hands.  If,  by 
any  chance,  she  should  get  saucy,  or  something  of  that 
kind,  you  can  pull  in  the  reins. 

NiKiTA.     Go  to  !     I  will  go  away. 


122  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Scene  XIX.     Nikita,  Matr^na,  and  Anisya  {pale.    Run- 
ning toward  Matrena  from  the  hut  around  the  corner). 

Anisya.  It  was  on  his  person.  Here  it  is.  (Shows 
it  lender  her  apron.) 

Matkena.  Give  it  to  Nikita !  He  will  hide  it.  Ni- 
kita, take  it  and  put  it  away  somewhere ! 

Nikita.     All  right !     Let  me  have  it ! 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  head !  I  will  put  it  away  myself ! 
(  Walks  over  toioard  the  gate.) 

Matrena  {seizing  her  hand).  Where  are  you  going  ? 
They  will  find  it  out,  and  his  sister  is  coming.  Give 
it  to  him :  he  knows  what  to  do  with  it.  Senseless 
woman  ! 

Anisya  {stops  in  indecision).     Oh,  my  head  ! 

Nikita.  Well,  let  me  have  it!  I  will  put  it  away 
safely. 

Anisya.     Where  will  you  put  it  ? 

Nikita.     Are  you  afraid  ?     {Laughs.) 

Scene  XX.     The    same  and  Akulina  {coming  with  the 

washing). 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  wretched  head !  {Gives  up  the 
money.)     Nikita,  look  out ! 

Nikita.  What  are  you  afraid  of  ?  I  will  put  it  away 
so  that  I  can't  find  it  myself.     {Exit.) 

Scene  XXI.     Matrena,  Anisya,  and  Akulina. 

Anisya  {standing  in  fright).     Oh,  oh,  when  he  — 
Matrena.     Well,  is  he  dead  ? 

Anisya.  Yes,  I  think  he  is.  He  did  not  stir  when  I 
took  it  from  him. 

Matrena.     Go  into  the  hut !     Akulina  is  coming. 
Anisya.     I  have  sinned,  and  he  with  the  money  — 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  123 

Matrena.  That  will  do.  Go  into  the  house  !  Marfa 
is  coming. 

Anisya.  I  have  trasted  him.  What  will  happen  now  ? 
{Exit.) 

Scene  XXII.     Marfa,  Akulina,  and  Matrena. 

Marfa  (coming  from  one  side,  and  Akulina  from  the 
other.  To  Akulina).  I  should  have  come  long  ago,  but 
I  was  at  my  daughter's.  WeU,  how  is  the  old  man  ?  Is 
he  going  to  die  ? 

Akulina  {taking  off  the  washing).  I  don't  know.  I 
was  at  the  river. 

Marfa  {pointing  to  Matrena).     Who  is  that  ? 

Matrena.  I  am  from  Zuev.  I  am  Nikita's  mother, 
from  Zuev,  my  friend.  Good  day  !  Your  brother  has 
been  asking  for  you.  He  came  out  himself.  "  Send  for 
my  sister,"  says  he,  "  because,"  says  he  —  Oh !  I  am 
afraid  he  may  be  dead  by  this  time. 

Scene  XXIII.     The  same  and  Anisya  {running  out  of  the 
house  with  a  cry.      Takes  hold  of  a  post  and  moans). 

Anisya.  Oh,  oh !  To  whom  has  he  left  me  ?  Oh,  oh, 
oh,  to  whom  has  he  abandoned  me  ?  Oh,  oh,  oh,  a  wretched 
widow  —  for  ever  and  ever  —  he  has  closed  his  clear 
eyes  — 

Scene  XXIV.  The  same  and  friend.  {The  friend  and 
Matrena  take  her  under  her  arins.  Akulina  aTid 
Marfa  go  into  the  hoiise.     People  gathering.) 

A  Voice  from  the  throng.  Call  for  old  women  to 
fix  things. 

Matrena  {rolling  up  her  sleeves).  Is  there  any  water 
in  the  iron  pot  ?  I  think  the  samovar  has  not  been 
emptied  yet.     I  will  work  myself. 

Curtain. 


DKAMATIS   PEESON^    OF   ACT   III. 


Akim. 

NiKITA. 

Akulina. 
Anisya. 


Anyutka. 

MiTRiCH,  an  old  hired  hand, 

an  ex-soldier. 
Anisya's    Sponsor. 


ACT   III. 

Peter's  hut.  Winter.  Nine  months  have  passed  since  the 
Second  Act.  Anisya,  in  every-day  attire,  working  at 
the  loom.     Anyutka  on  the  oven.      Mitrich,  the  hired 

hand. 

Scene   I. 

Mitrich  (walks  in  slowly.   Takes  off  his  coat).    0  Lord, 


be  merciful 

Anisya. 

Mitrich. 

Anisya. 

Mitrich. 

Anisya. 
floor? 

Mitrich. 
proper,  and 
to  do  things  by  halves 
(Picking  his  callosities.) 


Has  the  master  returned  ? 
What? 

Has  Nikita  come  back  from  town  ? 
No. 

He  is  evidently  on  a  spree.     0  Lord  I 
Have  you  done  your  work  on  the  threshing- 


Of  course.     I  have  fixed  everything  as  is 
have  covered  it  with   straw.      I   don't  like 
O  Lord  !     Merciful  St.  Nicholas  ! 
It  is  time  for  him  to  be  back. 


Anisya.      Why  should  he  be  in  a  hurry  ?      He  has 
money,  so,  I  suppose,  he  is  celebrating  with  a  girl  — 
Mitrich.     He  has  money,  —  then  why  not  celebrate  ? 

What  did  Akulina  go  to  town  for  ? 

124 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  125 

Anisya.  You  ask  her  why  the  uuclean  one  has  taken 
her  there. 

MiTKiCH.  Why  to  town  ?  In  town  there  is  much  of 
everything  if  you  only  have  the  means.     0  Lord  ! 

Anyutka.  I  have  heard  it  myself.  "  I  will  buy  you 
a  shawl,"  says  he,  "  I  will,"  truly,  says  he.  "  You  shall 
pick  it  out  yourself,"  says  he.  And  she  dressed  herself 
up :  she  put  on  the  plush  sleeveless  coat  and  the  French 
kerchief. 

Anisya.  It  is  true :  a  girl's  chastity  goes  as  far  as 
the  threshold.  Let  her  step  across  it,  and  she  forgets 
everything.     Shameless  one ! 

MiTRiCH.  Well,  what  is  there  to  be  ashamed  of? 
Celebrate  as  long  as  there  is  any  money  !  0  Lord !  Is  it 
too  early  for  supper  ?  (Anisi/a  keej^s  silent.)  In  the  mean- 
time I  will  warm  myself.  (Climhs  on  the  oven.)  0  Lord  ! 
Most  Holy  Mother  of  God  !    St.  Nicholas ! 

Scene  II.     The  same  and  Sponsor. 

Sponsor  (entei-).     Your  man  has  not  come  back  yet  ? 

Anisya.     No. 

Sponsor.  It  is  time  he  should  have.  I  w^onder  whether 
he  has  not  gone  to  our  inn.  Sister  Ft^kla  told  me  that  a 
number  of  sleighs  from  town  were  standing  there. 

Anisya.     Anyutka,  0  Auyvitka 

Anyutka.     What  ? 

Anisya.  Eun  down,  Anyutka,  to  the  inn,  and  see 
whether  he  is  not  there,  and  drunk. 

Anyutka  [jumping  down  from  the  oven,  and  p^itting 
on  her  coat).     Right  away  ! 

Sponsor.     Has  he  taken  Akulina  with  him  ? 

Anisya.  For  what  else  would  he  go  there  ?  She  is 
the  cause  of  it  all.  He  said  that  he  had  to  go  to  the  bank 
to  get  some  money,  but  it  is  only  she  who  is  taking 
him  to  town. 


126  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Sponsor  (shaking  her  head).  What  is  the  use  of  talk- 
ing about  it  ?    (Silence.) 

Anyutka  (at  the  door).  If  he  is  there,  what  shall  I 
say  to  him  ? 

Anisya.     Just  find  out  whether  he  is  there. 

Anyutka.     All  right,  I'll  go  quick.   (Exit.) 

Scene     III.       Anisya,    Mitrich,    and    Sponsor.      (Long 

silence.) 

Mitrich  (bellowing).     0  Lord  !    Holy  St.  Nicholas  ! 

Sponsor  {shuddering).  Oh,  how  he  has  frightened  me ! 
Who  is  that  ? 

Anisya.     Mitrich,  the  hired  hand. 

Sponsor.  Oh,  he  has  given  me  a  fright !  I  had  for- 
gotten about  him.  I  have  heard  that  somebody  has  been 
asking  for  Akulina's  hand. 

Anisya  (coming  out  from  hehuid  the  loom  and  seating 
herself  at  the  table).  The  Dy^dlov  people  hinted  about 
it ;  but  evidently  they  heard  something.  They  hinted 
about  it,  and  then  they  kept  silent,  —  and  that  was  the 
end  of  it.     Who  should  want  her  ? 

Sponsor.     What  about  the  Liziinovs  from  Ziiev  ? 

Anisya.  They  made  inquiries,  but  the  inquiries  did 
not  come  to  anything.     He  did  not  even  receive  them. 

Sponsor.     You  ought  to  get  her  married. 

Anisya.  I  should  say  I  ought  to.  I  should  hke  to 
get  her  away  from  the  farm,  but  I  do  not  know  how 
to  do  it.  He  does  not  want  to  let  her  go,  nor  does  she 
want  to  go  herself.  You  see,  he  has  not  yet  had  enough 
of  his  beauty. 

Sponsor.  Oh,  what  sins  !  What  he  is  up  to  !  And 
he  is  her  stepfather. 

Anisya.  Oh,  friend  !  They  have  cheated  and  deceived 
me  so  cleverly  !  In  my  foolishness  I  did  nof  notice  any- 
thing and  did  not  think  about  it,  and  so  I  married  him, 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  127 

I  did  not  suspect  a  thing,  but  they  had  an  understanding 
long  before. 

Sponsor.     Oh,  oh,  what  an  affair ! 

Anisya.  The  farther  it  went,  the  more  they  began  to 
hide  it  from  me.  Ah,  friend,  I  am  tired,  I  am  tired  of  my 
life.     It  would  be  different  if  I  did  not  love  him ! 

Sponsor.     Yes,  it  is  bad. 

Anisya.  It  pains  me,  friend,  to  be  wronged  by  him  in 
such  a  manner.     Oh,  it  pains  me ! 

Sponsor.  They  say  that  he  has  become  rough  in  his  ways. 

Anisya.  Yes,  that  is  so.  Formerly  he  used  to  be 
peaceful  when  he  drank ;  he  used  to  strike  me  before,  but 
he  loved  me ;  now,  when  he  fills  himself  up  with  drink, 
he  rushes  against  me  and  wants  to  trample  upon  me. 
The  other  day  he  stuck  his  hands  into  my  braids,  and  I 
had  the  hardest  time  to  get  away  from  him.  And  the 
girl  is  worse  than  a  snake.  I  wonder  how  the  earth 
can  bring  forth  such  evil  ones  ! 

Sponsor.  Oh,  oh,  oh,  friend !  You  look  pretty  well 
worn  out !  It  is  hard  to  bear  it  all.  You  picked  him  up 
when  he  was  a  beggar,  and  this  is  the  way  he  treats  you. 
Shall  you  not  try  to  stop  him  ? 

Anisya.  Oh,  my  dear  friend  !  What  shall  I  do  with 
my  heart  ?  My  former  husband  was  very  severe,  but  I 
twisted  him  as  I  wanted ;  I  cannot  do  so  with  this  one. 
The  moment  I  see  him  my  heart  softens.  I  have  no 
courage  against  him :  I  walk  around  before  him  like  a 
wet  chicken. 

Sponsor.  Oh,  oh,  friend  !  You  must-  be  bewitched. 
They  say  Matr^na  does  such  things.  It  must  be  she  who 
has  done  it. 

Anisya.  I  think  so  myself,  my  friend.  I  sometimes 
feel  so  angry,  I  should  like  to  tear  him  to  pieces ;  but  the 
moment  I  see  him  my  heart  does  not  allow  me  to  raise 
my  hands  against  him. 

Sponsor.     There  is  no  doubt,  you  are  bewitched.     It 


128  THE    POWEli    OF    DARKNESS 

does  not  take  long  to  spoil  a  person  by  witchcraft. 
It  makes  me  feel  badly  to  see  what  has  become  of  you. 

Anisya.  My  legs  are  as  thin  as  sticks.  But  look  at 
silly  Akulina !  She  is  a  slattern  and  a  good-for-nothing, 
but  just  look  at  her !  Where  did  it  all  come  from  ?  He 
has  dressed  her  up.  She  has  spread  out  and  is  as  bloated 
as  a  bladder  on  the  water.  Although  she  is  silly,  she  has 
got  it  into  her  head  to  say :  "  I,"  says  she,  "  am  the  mis- 
tress here.  The  house  is  mine,  leather  wanted  me  to 
marry  him."  And  oh,  how  mean  she  is !  God  save  us 
from  her !  When  she  gets  angry  she  tears  the  straw 
down  from  the  roof. 

Sponsok.  Oh,  oh,  friend,  what  a  life  you  lead !  And 
people  envy  you  !  They  say  you  are  rich  ;  but  evidently, 
my  dear,  tears  flow  also  over  gold. 

Anisya.  What  is  there  to  envy  ?  The  wealth  will  all 
pass  away  like  dust.     He  squanders  the  money  terribly. 

Sponsor.  But  how  is  it,  my  friend,  you  have  let  it 
happen  ?     The  money  is  yours. 

Anisya.  If  you  only  knew  it  all !  I  made  a  little  blunder. 

Sponsok.  If  I  were  in  your  place,  my  friend,  I  should 
go  to  some  great  officer.  The  money  is  yours.  How  can 
he  squander  it  ?     There  are  no  such  laws. 

Anisya.     They  pay  no  attention  to  this  nowadays. 

Sponsor.     Oh,  friend,  you  look  pretty  weak  ! 

Anisya.  Yes,  my  dear,  I  am  weak,  very  weak.  He 
has  ruined  me.  I  do  not  know  what  to  do.  Oh,  oh,  my 
wretched  head ! 

Sponsor.  Somebody  is  coming,  I  think.  {Listens. 
The  doo7'  opens.     Enter  Akim.) 

Scene  IV.     The  same  a7id  Akim. 

Akim  (crosses  himself.  Shakes  off  the  mud  from  his 
shoes  and  takes  off  his  wraps).  Peace  be  upon  this  house  ! 
How  are  you  ?     Good  day,  aunty. 


THE    POWER   OP   DARKNESS  129 

Antsy  A.     Good  day,  father  !     Are  you  from  the  farm  ? 

Akim.  I  thought,  so  to  speak,  I  would  come  down  to 
see  my  son,  so  to  speak.  I  started  late,  after  dinner,  so 
to  speak ;  as  I  walked,  it  was  snowing,  and  it  was  hard 
to  walk,  so  to  speak,  and  so  I  am  late.  Is  my  son  at 
home  ?     Is  he  at  home  ? 

Anisya.     No.     He  is  in  town. 

Akim  (sits  dovm  on  the  bench).  I  have  some  business, 
so  to  speak,  some  business  with  him.  I  told  him  the 
other  day,  so  to  speak,  about  my  need,  so  to  speak ; 
the  horse  has  died,  so  to  speak.  I  must  get  me  another 
horse,  so  to  speak,  any  kind  of  a  horse,  so  to  speak.  So 
I  have  come,  so  to  speak. 

Anisya.  Nikita  told  me  about  it.  You  will  talk  with 
him  when  he  comes  home.  (  Walks  toward  the  oven.)  You 
eat  supper,  and  by  that  time  he  will  be  here.  Mitrich, 
oh,  Mitrich,  come  to  supper  ! 

Mitrich.     O  Lord,  merciful  St.  Nicholas ! 

Anisya.     Come  to  supper  ! 

Sponsor.     I  will  go  now.     Good-bye !     (Exit.) 

Scene  V.     Akim,  Anisya,  and  Mitrich. 

Mitrich  (climhing  down).  I  do  not  know  how  I  came 
to  fall  asleep.  0  Lord,  St.  Nicholas !  Good  evening, 
Uncle  Akim ! 

Akim.  Oh,  Mitrich !  What  are  you  doing  here,  so  to 
speak  ?  — 

Mitrich.     I  am  working  for  Nikita,  your  son. 

Akim.  I  say !  So  you  are  working  for  my  son,  so  to 
speak  ?     I  say  ! 

Mitrich.  I  was  staying  with  a  merchant  in  town,  but 
I  took  to  drinking  there ;  so  I  came  back  to  the  village. 
I  have  no  place  to  go  to,  so  I  hired  out  at  your  son's. 
(  Yawning.)     O  Lord  ! 

Akim.     Well,  so  to  speak,  how  is  Nikita  doing,  so  to 


130  THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS 

speak  ?  He  must  be  doing  well,  so  to  speak,  to  be  able, 
so  to  speak,  to  hire  a  man. 

MiTRiCH.     He  has  money,  then  why  should  he  — 

Akim.  That  is  all  in  vain,  so  to  speak,  all  in  vain.  In 
vain,  I  say.    Looseness,  so  to  speak. 

Anisya.     Yes,  he  is  spoilt,  dreadfully  spoilt. 

Akim.  That's  it !  I  was  thinking,  so  to  speak,  how  to 
do  it  better,  but  he  is  doing  it  worse,  so  to  speak.  A  man 
gets  spoilt  by  wealth,  so  to  speak,  —  he  does. 

MiTKiCH.  Even  a  dog  maddens  from  fat,  —  then  why 
should  a  man  not  spoil  from  fat  ?  You  ought  to  have 
seen  me  going  on  a  spree  when  I  had  money !  I  drank 
for  three  weeks  without  stopping.  I  gave  my  last  trousers 
for  drinks.  When  I  did  not  have  anything  left  I  stopped. 
Now  I  have  sworn  off.     Botlier ! 

Akim.     And  your  old  woman,  so  to  speak,  where  is  she  ? 

MiTRiCH.  The  old  woman,  my  friend,  is  well  fixed. 
She  sits  now  in  one  inn  in  town,  now  in  another.  She 
looks  fine :  one  eye  is  torn  out,  the  other  is  black,  and  her 
mouth  is  all  awry.  She  is  never  sober,  —  pea-pie  choke 
her ! 

Akim.     Oh,  oh  !     How  is  that  ? 

MiTRiCH.  Where  else  is  there  a  place  for  a  soldier's 
wife  ?     This  is  her  proper  occupation.     {Silence.) 

Akim  {to  Anisya).  Has  Nikita  taken  anything  to 
town  ?     Has  he,  so  to  speak,  taken  anything  to  sell  ? 

Anisya  {setting  the  table  and  passing  the  food).  He 
went  with  nothing.  He  went  to  fetch  some  money  from 
the  bank. 

Akim  {eating).  What  do  you  want  to  do  with  the 
money  ?  Do  you  want  to  use  it  for  something,  so  to 
speak  ? 

Anisya.  No,  we  do  not  touch  it.  Only  twenty  or 
thirty  roubles ;  we  had  to  take  them  out. 

Akim.  Had  to  take  them  ?  Why  should  you  take  the 
money,  so  to  speak  ?     You  take  it  to-day,  and  you  take  it 


THE    POWER    OF  .DARKNESS  131 

to-morrow,  so  to  speak,  and  then  you  use  it  all  up,  so  to 
speak. 

Anisya.  This  is  above  the  capital.  The  money  is  not 
touched. 

Akim.  Not  touched  ?  How  not  touched  ?  You  take 
it,  and  it  is,  so  to  speak,  not  touched  ?  You  pour  flour, 
so  to  speak,  into  a  box,  so  to  speak,  or  into  the  granary, 
and  take  the  flour  out  again, —  well,  will  it  remain 
untouched,  so  to  speak  ?  There  is  something  wrong, 
they  are  cheating  you,  so  to  speak.  You  had  better  find 
out,  or  they  will  cheat  you.  How  can  it  be  untouched  ? 
You  are  taking  away,  so  to  speak,  —  and  it  is  not 
touched ! 

Anisya.  I  don't  know  about  that.  Ivan  Mos^ich 
advised  us  to  do  it.  "Put  the  money  into  the  bank," 
says  he,  "  then  the  money  will  be  safe,  and  you  will  get 
interest  on  it." 

MiTRiCH  {through  eating).  That  is  correct.  I  used  to 
live  at  the  house  of  a  merchant :  he  did  it  the  same  way. 
All  one  has  to  do  is  to  put  the  money  in,  and  then  lie  on 
the  oven  and  receive  money. 

Akim.  You  are  saying  some  wonderful  things,  so  to 
speak.  How  is  one  to  receive  it,  so  to  speak  ?  You 
receive  it,  so  to  speak,  and  from  whom  do  they  get  the 
money,  so  to  speak  ? 

Anisya.     The  bank  gives  us  the  money. 

MiTRiCH.  What  is  that?  A  woman  can't  make  it 
out.  Look  here !  I  will  explain  it  to  you.  Listen  !  Let 
us  suppose,  for  example,  you  have  money,  and  I,  for 
example,  have  my  land  lying  fallow ;  it  is  spring,  and  I 
have  no  seed ;  or  I  have  to  pay  the  taxes.  So  I  come  to 
you,  and  say  :  "  Akim,  give  me  ten  roubles  !  I  will  have 
the  harvest  in  by  St.  Mary's  Intercession  and  then  I  will 
give  it  back  to  you,  with  a  tithe  for  the  accommodation." 
You,  for  example,  see  that  I  can  be  flayed,  having  a  horse 
or  a  cow,  so  you  say :  "  Give  me  two  or  three  roubles  for 


132  THE    FOWIiR    OF    DARKNESS 

the  accommodation."  The  noose  is  around  my  neck,  and  I 
cannot  get  along  without  it.  "  Very  well,"  says  I,  "  I  will 
take  the  ten  roubles."  In  the  fall  I  sell  some  things,  and 
I  bring  you  the  money,  and  you  skin  me  in  addition  for 
three  roubles. 

Akim.  But  this  is,  so  to  speak,  a  wrong  done  to  a 
peasant.     If  one  forgets  God,  so  to  speak,  it  is  not  good. 

MiTRiCH.  Wait  a  minute  !  She  will  soon  strike  the 
same  thing.  So  remember  what  you  have  done :  you 
have  fleeced  me,  so  to  speak,  aud  Ai^i^y^?  ^o^  example, 
has  some  money  which  is  lying  idle.  She  has  no  place 
to  put  it  in  and,  being  a  woman,  does  not  know  what  to 
do  with  it.  So  she  comes  to  you :  "  Can't  I,"  says  she, 
"  make  some  use  of  my  money  ?  "  '•'  Yes,  you  can,"  you 
say.  And  so  you  wait.  Next  summer  I  come  to  you 
once  more.  "  Give  me  another  ten  roubles,"  says  I,  "  and 
I  will  pay  you  for  the  accommodation."  So  you  watch 
me  to  see  whether  my  hide  has  not  been  turned  yet, 
whether  I  can  be  flayed  again,  aud  if  I  can,  you  give  me 
Anisya's  money.  But  if  I  have  not  a  blessed  thing,  and 
nothing  to  eat,  you  make  your  calculations,  seeing  that  I 
cannot  be  skinned,  and  you  say :  "  God  be  with  you,  my 
brother ! "  and  you  look  out  for  another  man  to  whom  to 
give  Anisya's  money,  and  whom  you  can  flay.  Now  this 
is  called  a  bank.  So  it  keeps  going  around.  It  is  a  very 
clever  thing,  my  friend. 

Akim  {excitedly).  What  is  this  ?  This  is  a  nastiness, 
so  to  speak.  If  a  peasant,  so  to  speak,  were  to  do  it,  the 
peasants  would  regard  it  as  a  sin,  so  to  speak.  This  is 
not  according  to  the  Law,  not  according  to  the  Law,  so 
to  speak.  It  is  bad.  How  can  the  learned  men,  so  to 
speak  — 

MiTRiCH.  This,  my  friend,  is  their  favourite  occupa- 
tion. You  consider  this :  If  there  is  one  who  is  not  very 
clever,  or  a  woman,  who  has  money  and  does  not  know 
what  to  do  with  it,  they  take  it  to  a  bank,  and  the  bank 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  lo3 

snatches  it  up,  —  pea-pie  choke  them,  —  and  skins  the 
people  with  that  raouey.     It's  a  clever  thing. 

Akim  {sighing).  As  I  look  at  it,  so  to  speak,  there  is 
trouble  without  money,  so  to  speak,  and  with  money  the 
trouble  is  double,  so  to  speak.  God  has  commanded  to 
work.  But  you  put  the  money  in  the  bank,  so  to  speak, 
and  he  down  to  sleep,  and  the  money  will  feed  you,  so  to 
speak,  while  you  are  lying.  This  is  bad,  —  not  according 
to  the  Law,  so  to  speak. 

MiTRiCH.  Not  according  to  the  Law  ?  The  Law  does 
not  trouble  people  nowadays,  my  friend.  All  they  think 
about  is  how  to  clean  out  a  fellow.     That's  what ! 

Akim  (sighing).  The  time  is  coming  near,  so  to  speak. 
I  have  seen  water-closets,  so  to  speak,  in  the  city.  What 
have  they  come  to  ?  They  are  nice  and  clean,  so  to 
speak,  hke  an  inn.  What  does  it  all  lead  to,  what  does 
it  lead  to  ?  Oh,  they  have  forgotten  God !  They  have 
forgotten  Him,  so  to  speak.  We  have  forgotten  God,  yes, 
we  have  forgotten  Him.  Thank  you,  my  dear,  I  have 
had  enough,  —  I  am  satisfied.  (Comes  out  from  hehind 
the  table.     Mitrich  climbs  iipon  the  oven.) 

Anisya  (taking  avjay  the  dishes,  and  eating).  Father 
might  talk  to  him,  but  I  am  ashamed  to  mention  it  to  him. 

Akim.     What  ? 

Anisya.     Nothing,  I  was  just  speaking  to  myself. 

Scene    VI.     The  same  and  Anyutka  (enter). 

Akim.  Ah,  clever  girl !  Still  flying  around  ?  You 
are  frozen,  I  suppose. 

Anyutka.  I  am  dreadfully  frozen.  Good  evening, 
grandfather ! 

Anisya.     Well  ?     Is  he  there  ? 

Anyutka.  No.  Andrian,  who  has  come  back  from 
town,  says  that  he  is  still  in  town,  in  an  inn.  Father,  he 
says,  is  dead  drunk. 


134  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anisya.     Do  you  want  to  eat  ?     Here,  take  it ! 

Anyutka  {goes  to  the  oven).  Oh,  it  is  so  cold !  My 
hands  are  numb.  {Akim  takes  off  his  coat  and  shoes. 
Anisya  washes  the  dishes.) 

Anisya.     Father ! 

Akim.     "What  do  you  wish  ? 

Anisya.     Is  Marina  living  well  ? 

Akim.  Not  bad.  She  is  getting  along.  She  is  a 
clever  woman,  so  to  speak,  and  peaceable,  and  is  getting 
on  well,  so  to  speak.  She  is  a  good  worker,  so  to  speak, 
and  tries  hard,  and,  so  to  speak,  is  obedient.  She  is  all 
right,  so  to  speak. 

Anisya.  They  say  that  a  relative  of  Marina's  husband 
wanted  to  marry  our  Akulina.  Haven't  you  heard  any- 
thing about  it  ? 

Akim.  The  Mii'onovs  ?  The  women  were  saying  some- 
thing about  it.  I  did  not  pay  any  attention  to  it,  so  to 
speak.  I  do  not  know  for  sure,  so  to  speak.  The  women 
were  saying  something.  But  I  do  not  remember,  I  do  not 
remember  it,  so  to  speak.  Well,  the  Mirdnovs  are  good 
peasants,  so  to  speak. 

Anisya.  I  wish  so  much  I  could  get  her  married  at 
once. 

Akim.     What  is  it  ? 

Anyutka  (listening).     They  have  come. 

Anisya.  Keep  out  of  their  way  !  ( Continues  to  wash 
the  spoons,  without  turning  her  head.) 

Scene  VII.     The  same  and  Nikita. 

NiKlTA.  Anisya,  my  wife,  who  has  come  ?  (Anisya 
looks  around  and,  turning  away,  keeps  silent.) 

NiKiTA  (angrily).  Wlio  has  come  ?  Have  you  for- 
gotten ? 

Anisya.     Stop  blustermg  !     Go ! 

NiKlTA  (more  angrily  still).     Who  has  come  2 


THE    POWER   OP   DARKNESS  ISb 

Anisya  (walks  over  to  him  and  takes  hold  of  his  hand). 
Well,  my  husband  has  come.     Go  into  the  room. 

NiKiTA  (holding  back).  That's  it,  your  husband.  What 
is  his  name  ?     Say  it  correctly  ! 

Anisya.     Well,  Nikita. 

NiKiTA.  That's  it !  You  boor,  call  me  by  my  patro- 
nymic 1 

Anisya.     Akimych.     Well  ? 

NiKiTA  (still  at  the  door).  That's  it.  No,  you  tell  my 
family  name ! 

Anisya  (laughing,  and  pulling  him  hy  his  hand). 
Chilikin.     How  angry  you  look  ! 

NiKiTA.  That's  it.  (Holding  on  to  the  door-post). 
No,  you  tell  me  what  foot  Chilikin  puts  first  as  he  steps 
into  the  room. 

Anisya.     That  will  do !     The  room  is  getting  cold. 

NiKiTA.  Tell  me  what  foot.  You  must  tell  me  by  all 
means. 

Anisya  (aside).  He'll  tire  me  out.  Well,  the  left. 
Come  now. 

NiKiTA.     That's  it. 

Anisya.     See  who  is  in  the  room  ! 

NiKiTA.  My  father  ?  Well,  I  am  not  ashamed  of  my 
father.  I  can  show  the  proper  respect  to  my  father. 
Good  evening,  father !  (Boivs  to  hi7ii  and  gives  him  his 
hand.)     My  respects  to  you  ! 

Akim  (not  ansivering  him).  The  hquor,  the  liquor,  so 
to  speak,  is  doing  it.     It  is  bad. 

NiKiTA.  The  liquor  ?  Because  I  have  drunk  some  ? 
I  am  quite  guilty  of  this.  I  have  taken  a  drink  with  a 
friend. 

Anisya.     Go  and  lie  down  ! 

NiKiTA.     Wife,  where  am  I  standing  ?     Speak  ! 

Anisya.     Now,  stop  it !     Go  and  lie  down  ! 

NiKiTA.  I  will  have  a  samovar  with  father.  Fix  the 
samovar  !     Akuhna,  come  in  ! 


136  THE    POWER    OF    DAEKNESS 


Scene  VIIL     The  same  and  Akulina. 

Akulina  (dressed  up.  Walks  ivith  her  intrchases  up 
to  Nikita).  How  you  scatter  things !  Where  is  the 
harness  ? 

Nikita.  The  harness  ?  The  harness  is  there.  Oh, 
Mitrich,  where  are  you  ?  Are  you  asleep  ?  Go  and  put 
the  horse  up ! 

Akim  {iiot  seeing  Akulina  and  looking  at  his  son). 
What  are  you  doing  ?  The  old  man  is,  so  to  speak, 
worn  out :  he  has  been  threshing,  and  you  are  all  bloated, 
so  to  speak.  "  Put  the  horse  up ! "  Pshaw,  how  bad 
that  is  ! 

MiTKiCH  (climbs  down  from  the  oven  and  puts  on  his 
felt  boots).  0  merciful  Lord  !  Is  the  horse  in  the  yard  ? 
I  suppose  you  have  worn  it  out !  Thunder,  he  is  sopped 
in  liquor,  —  through  and  through.  0  Lord  !  St.  Nicho- 
las !     (Puts  on  the  fur  coat  and  exit.) 

Nikita  (sitting  down).  Forgive  me,  father !  I  have 
drunk  some,  that  is  so ;  but  what  is  to  be  done  ?  A 
chicken  drinks,  too.  Am  I  not  right  ?  So  forgive  me ! 
As  to  Mitrich,  —  he  will  not  be  offended,  he  will  put  the 
horse  up. 

Anisya.     Do  you  really  want  the  samovar  ? 

Nikita.  Make  it !  Father  has  come,  and  I  want  to 
drink  tea  with  him  and  talk.  (To  Akulina.)  Have  you 
taken  out  all  the  purchases  ? 

Akulina.  The  purchases  ?  I  took  out  what  belongs 
to  me ;  the  rest  are  in  the  sleigh.  Take  this ;  it  does 
not  belong  to  me.  (TJirows  a  roll  on  the  table,  and 
puts  the  purchases  into  a  coffer.  AnytUka  watches 
Akulina  putting  avxiy  things.  Akim  does  not  look  at 
his  son,  and  puts  away  his  leg-rags  and  the  hast  shoes 
on  the  oven.) 

Anisya  (exit  with  the  samovar).  The  coffer  is  full,  but 
he  has  bought  more  things. 


THE   POWER   OF    DARKNESS  137 


Scene  IX.     Akim,  Akulma,  Anyiitka,  and  Nikita. 

NiKiTA  {tries  to  look  sober).  Father,  don't  be  angry 
with  me !  You  think  that  I  am  drunk.  I  can  do  every- 
thing :  I  can  drink  without  losing  my  senses.  I  can  talk 
with  you,  father,  as  though  nothing  had  happened.  I 
remember  everything.  You  told  me  about  the  money : 
you  said  that  the  horse  has  died,  —  I  remember  it  all. 
That  can  be  done.  It  is  all  in  our  hands.  If  an  immense 
sum  were  asked  I  would  have  to  put  it  off  for  some  time, 
but  this  I  can  do.     Here  it  is. 

Akim  (still  busy  with  his  rags).  Oh,  my  son,  a  spring 
path  is,  so  to  speak,  not  a  road  — 

Nikita.  What  do  you  mean  by  it  ?  You  can't  talk 
well  with  a  drunken  man.  Never  mind  !  We  will  have 
some  tea  together.  I  can  do  everything,  positively  I 
can. 

Akim  (shaking  his  head).     Oh,  oh,  oh  ! 

Nikita.  Here  is  the  money.  (Fats  his  hand  into  his 
pocket,  gets  the  pocketbook,  flourishes  the  money  aiid  pidls 
out  a  ten-rouble  bill.)  Take  this  for  your  horse !  Take 
it  for  the  horse !  I  cannot  forget  a  father.  I  will 
positively  not  abandon  you.  Here,  take  it !  I  do  not 
begrudge  you  the  money.  (Comes  up  and  pushes  the 
money  into  Akim's  hand,  but  Akim  does  not  want  to  take 
it.)     Take  it,  I  say  !     I  give  it  with  pleasure. 

Akim.  I  cannot  take  it,  so  to  speak.  I  cannot  speak 
with  you,  so  to  speak,  because  there  is  no  decency  about 
you,  so  to  speak. 

Nikita.  I  will  not  let  you  go.  Take  it ! '  (Pushes  the 
money  into  Akim's  ha'iid.) 

Scene  X.     The  same  and  Anisya. 

Anisya  (enters  and  stops).  You  had  better  take  it,  for 
he  will  give  you  no  rest. 


138  THE   POWEK   OF   DARKNESS 

■\ 

Akim  (takes  it,  shaking  his  head).  Oh,  the  liquor ! 
You  are  not  a  man,  so  to  speak  — 

NiKiTA.  This  is  better.  If  you  give  it  back  to  me  it 
will  be  well ;  if  not,  God  be  with  you  !  That's  my  way  ! 
{^Seeing  Akulina.)     Akulina,  show  your  presents  ! 

Akulina.     What  ? 

NiKiTA.     Show  your  presents  ! 

Akulina.  The  presents  ?  What  is  the  use  of  showing 
them  ?     I  have  put  them  away. 

NiKiTA.  Get  them  out,  I  say !  Anyiltka  likes  to  see 
them.  Show  them,  I  say,  to  Anyiitka !  Open  up  the 
shawl !     Give  it  to  me  ! 

Akim.  Oh,  it  makes  me  feel  bad  to  look  at  him. 
(Climbing  on  the  oven.) 

Akulixa  (taking  out  her  things  arid  putting  them  on  the 
table).     Here  they  are.     What  is  there  to  look  at  ? 

Anyutka.  Oh,  how  nice  they  are  !  This  is  not  worse 
than  Stepanidiua's. 

Akulina.  Stepanidina's  ?  Stepanidiua's  does  not  come 
up  to  this.  (Beco7ning  more  animated  and  opening  the 
shawl.)  Look  at  it !  See  what  quality  it  is :  it  is  of  French 
make. 

Anyutka.  And  what  pretty  chintz !  Mashiitka  has 
one  like  it,  only  hers  is  lighter,  on  an  azure  field.  This 
one  is  so  nice  ! 

NiKiTA.  That's  it.  (Anisya  goes  angrily  into  the 
storeroom,  and  returns  with  the  samovar  pipe  and  table- 
cloth, and  walks  over  to  the  table.) 

Anisya.     How  you  have  scattered  things  here ! 

NiKiTA.     Look  here  ! 

Anisya.  What  am  I  to  look  at  ?  I  have  seen  such 
things  before.  Take  them  away  !  (Brushes  the  shawl 
down  on  the  floor.) 

Akulina.  Don't  throw  about  things  like  that !  Throw 
your  own  things !     (Picks  it  up.) 

NlKiTA.     Anisya,  look  out ! 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  139 

Anisya.     What  am  I  to  look  out  for  ? 

NiKiTA.  You  think  I  have  forgotten  you.  Look 
here  !  (Shows  the  roll  and  sits  down  upo7i  it.)  It  is 
a  present  for  you.  Only  you  have  to  earn  it.  Woman, 
where  am  I  sitting  ? 

Anisya.  Stop  your  nonsense  !  I  am  not  afraid  of  you. 
On  whose  money  are  you  celebrating,  and  buying  presents 
for  your  hussy  ?     On  mine. 

Akulina.  Yes,  yours !  You  wanted  to  steal  it,  but 
you  did  not  succeed.  Get  away  !  (  Wants  to  pass  ly  and 
pushes  her.) 

Anisya.  Don't  push  that  way !  I  will  give  you 
a  push  ! 

Akulina.     You  will  ?     Try  it !     (Pushes  against  her.) 

NiKiTA.    Women,  women,  stop  !    (Stands  between  them.) 

Akulina.  She  started  it.  She  had  better  keep  quiet. 
You  think  we  do  not  know  all  about  you  ? 

Anisya.  What  do  you  know  ?  Say,  say  what  you 
know  ! 

Akulina.     I  know  something  about  you. 

Anisya.  You  are  a  slut !  You  are  living  with  a  mar- 
ried man, 

Akulina.     And  you  have  killed  your  husband  ! 

Anisya  (rushes  at  Akulina).     You  lie  ! 

Nikita  (holding  her  hack).  Anisya,  have  you  for- 
gotten ? 

Anisya.  You  can't  frighten  me.  I  am  not  afraid  of 
you. 

NiKiTA.  Get  out  of  here !  (Turns  her  away  and 
pushes  her  out.) 

Anisya.  Where  shall  I  go?  I  won't  go  away  from 
my  house. 

NiKiTA.  Get  out,  I  say  !  And  don't  you  dare  put  your 
foot  in  again  ! 

Anisya.  I  will  not  go.  (Nikita  pushes  her ;  Anisya 
weeps  and  cries,  holding  on  to  the  door.)     What  ?      You 


140  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

want  to  kick  me  out  of  my  own  house  ?  What  are  you 
doing,  you  rascal  ?  Do  you  think  there  is  no  law  against 
you  ?     Just  wait ! 

NiKiTA.     Well,  well ! 

Anisya.     I  will  go  to  the  elder,  to  the  officer. 

NiKiTA.     Get  out,  1  say.     {Picshcs  her  out.) 

Anisya  (behind  the  door).     1  will  hang  myself ! 

Scene  XI.     Nikita,  Akuliua,  Anyutka,  and  Akim. 

NiKiTA.     That's  all  right. 

Anyutka.  Oh,  oh,  oh !  Mother  dear,  mother  dear. 
( Weeping.) 

Nikita.  I  am  not  much  afraid  of  her.  Wliat  are  you 
crying  about  ?  Never  mind,  she  will  come  back.  Go 
and  look  after  the  samovar  !     [Anyutka  exit.) 

Scene  XII.     Nikita,  Akim,  and  Akulina. 

Akulina  {picking  up)  her  purchases  and  putting  them 
away).  How  that  accursed  one  has  been  carrying  on  ! 
Just  wait !  I  will  cut  up  your  sleeveless  coat.  Upon 
my  word,  I  will. 

Nikita.  I  have  driven  her  away, —  what  more  do 
you  want  ? 

Akulina.  She  has  soiled  my  new  shawl.  Dog !  If 
she  had  not  gone  I  would  have  scratched  out  her 
eyes. 

Nikita.  Stop  your  noise !  What  are  you  making  a 
noise  about  ?     You  know  I  do  not  love  her  ! 

Akulina.  Love  her?  A  fine  person  to  love, — that 
woman  with  the  big  snout.  If  you  had  let  her  go  then, 
nothing  would  have  happened.  You  ought  to  have  sent 
her  to  the  devil.  The  house  is  mine,  anyway,  and  so  is 
the  money.  She  says  she  is  the  mistress.  Mistress ! 
What  kind  of  a  mistress  is  she  to  her  husband  ?     She  is 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  141 

a  ruiuer  of  souls,  that's  what  she  is.  She  will  do  the 
same  to  you ! 

NiKiTA.  There  is  no  stopping  up  a  woman's  mouth  ! 
You  don't  know  yourself  what  you  are  yelling  about. 

Akulina.  Yes,  I  do.  I  will  not  live  with  her.  I  will 
drive  her  away.  She  cannot  stay  with  me.  And  she  calls 
herself  mistress.     She  is  not  a  mistress,  but  a  jailbird. 

NiKiTA.  That  will  do.  What  have  you  to  do  with 
her  ?  Don't  look  at  her !  Look  at  me  !  I  am  the  mas- 
ter. I  do  what  I  want.  I  do  not  love  her  any  longer  — 
I  love  you.  I  love  whomever  I  please.  I  rule  here. 
She  will  be  locked  up.  This  is  where  she  is.  {^Points 
under  his  feet.)      Oh,  I  have  no  accordion ! 

The  rolls  are  on  the  stove, 

The  mush  is  on  the  shelf, 

And  we  will  live. 

And  celebrate, 

And  death  will  come, 

And  we  will  die. 

The  rolls  are  on  the  stove, 

The  mush  is  on  the  shelf. 

Scene  XIII.     The  same  and  Mitrich  (enter.      Takes  off 
his  wraps  and  climbs  on  the  oven). 

Mitrich.  Evidently  the  women  have  been  fighting 
again.     0  Lord,  merciful  St.  Nicholas  ! 

Akim  (sitting  on  the  edge  of  the  oven.  Takes  the  leg- 
rags  and  shoes,  and  puts  them  on).  Creep  past  me  to  the 
corner. 

Mitrich  (creeping).     They  won't  agree  at  all.     0  Lord  1 

NiKiTA.  Get  the  syrup!  We  will  drink  the  tea 
with  it. 

Scene    XIV.     The  same  and  Anyiitka. 

Anyijtka  (enter,  to  Akulina).  Sister !  the  samovar  is 
boiling  over. 


142  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

NiKiTA.     Where  is  mother  ? 

Anyutka.      She  is  standing  in  the  vestibule  and  weep- 


ing. 


NiKiTA.  Go  and  call  her,  and  tell  her  to  bring  in  the 
samovar  !     Akulina,  let  us  have  the  dishes  ! 

Akulina.  The  dishes?  All  right.  {Taking  up  the 
dishes.) 

NiKiTA  (gets  the  syrup,  pretzels,  and  herring).  This  is 
for  myself  ;  for  the  woman  there  in  the  vestibule,  —  the 
goods.  And  here  is  the  money.  Wait !  ( Takes  the 
ahacus.)  I  will  figure  it  up  at  once.  (Casts  the  account 
on  the  abacus.)  The  wheat  flour  eight  dimes,  the  oil  — 
Father,  ten  roubles.  Father !  Come  to  tea !  (Silence. 
Akim  is  sitting  07i  the  oven  and  fixing  the  hast  cords  of  his 
shoes.) 

Scene  XV.     The  same  and  Anisya. 

Anisya  (carrying  in  the  samovar).  Where  shall  I 
put  it  ? 

KiKiTA.  Put  it  on  the  table !  Well,  have  you  been  to 
the  elder's  ?  That's  it :  talk,  and  be  done  with  it !  Stop 
being  angry !  Sit  down  and  drink  tea !  (Fills  a  wine- 
glass for  her.)  Here  is  a  present  for  you.  ( Gives  her  the 
roll  on  which  he  had  been  sitting.  Anisya  takes  it  in 
silence,  shaking  her  head.) 

Akim  (climbing  down  and  putting  on  his  fiir  coat.  Goes 
up  to  the  table  and  puts  the  money  upon  it).  Take  the 
money,  —  take  it ! 

NiKiTA  (7iot  seeing  the  money).  Where  are  you  getting 
ready  to  go  ? 

Akim.  I  will  go,  I  will  go,  so  to  speak,  for  Christ's 
sake  forgive  me !     (Takes  his  cap  and  belt.) 

NiKiTA.  I  declare !  Where  do  you  want  to  go  in 
night-time  ? 

Akim.  I  cannot,  so  to  speak,  remain  in  your  house.  I 
cannot,  so  to  speak,  stay  here.     Forgive  me  ! 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  143 

NiKiTA.     But  why  are  you  rushing  away  from  the  tea  ? 

Akim  {girding  himself).  I  will  go  away,  because,  so 
to  speak,  it  is  not  good  here ;  it  is  not  good  here,  Nikita, 
so  to  speak.  You  are  living  badly,  so  to  speak,  Nikita, 
badly.     I  will  go  away. 

Nikita.     Stop  talking  !     Sit  down  and  drink  tea 

Anisya.  Father,  it  will  be  a  disgrace  before  people. 
What  is  it  that  has  offended  you  ? 

Akim.  I  have  not  been  offended,  so  to  speak,  but  I  see 
that  everything  is  making  for  ruin,  so  to  speak,  —  yes, 
my  son,  for  ruin,  so  to  speak. 

Nikita.     What  ruin  ?     Prove  it ! 

Akim.  To  ruin,  to  ruin,  you  are  going  to  ruin.  I  told 
you  so  last  year. 

Nikita.     What  of  it  if  you  told  me  ? 

Akim.  I  told  you  about  the  orphan.  You  have 
wronged,  so  to  speak,  the  orphan,  Marina,  —  you  have 
wronged  her. 

Nikita.  What  are  you  thinking  about  ?  Of  old  yeast 
make  not  a  new  feast !     That  is  a  thing  of  the  past  — 

Akim  (excitedly).  Past  ?  No,  friend,  it  is  not  past. 
One  sin  holds  on  to  another  and  pulls  you  along.  Nikita, 
you  are  stuck  in  sins.  You  are  stuck,  1  see,  in  sins.  You 
are  stuck  fast,  so  to  speak. 

Nikita.  Sit  down  and  drink  tea,  and  stop  that  talk- 
ing!    ^ 

Akim.  I  cannot,  so  to  speak,  drink  tea  with  you. 
Because  your  evil  deeds,  so  to  speak,  make  me  feel  bad. 
I  cannot,  so  to  speak,  drink  with  you. 

Nikita.  You  are  repeating  one  and  the  same  story. 
Go  to  the  table  ! 

Akim.  You  are  sitting  in  your  wealth,  so  to  speak,  as 
though  in  a  snare,  in  a  snare,  so  to  speak.  Oh,  Nikita, 
one  needs  a  soul. 

NikIta.  What  right  have  you  to  talk  to  me  that  way 
in  my  own  house  ?      What  do  you  want  of  me,  anyway  ? 


144  THE   POWER   OF   DAEKNESS 

Am  I  a  little  boy  that  will  allow  himself  to  be  pulled  by 
his  hair  ?     They  don't  do  these  things  nowadays. 

Akim.  That  is  so :  I  have  heard  that  nowadays  they 
pull  fathers'  beards,  so  to  speak,  —  but  this  leads  only  to 
ruin,  to  ruin,  so  to  speak. 

NikIta  (angrily).  We  are  getting  along  without  your 
help.      But  you  have  come  to  ask  aid  of  me. 

Akim.  Money  ?  There  is  your  money.  I  will  go  and 
beg,  so  to  speak,  but  I  will  not,  so  to  speak,  take  the 
money. 

NiKiTA.  Stop  that!  Why  are  you  so  angry,  and 
breaking  up  the  company  ?  (Holds  him  hack  hy  his 
hand.) 

Akim  {moaning).  Let  me  go !  I  will  not  stay  !  I 
would  rather  sleep  near  the  fence  than  in  your  nastiness. 
Pshaw,  God  forgive  you  !     (Exit.) 


Scene   XVI.     Nikita,  Akulina,  Anisya,  and  Mitrich. 
NiKiTA.     I  declare ! 

Scene  XVII.     The  same  a7id  Akim. 

Akim  (opening  the  door).     Nikitu,  come  to  your  senses 
One  needs  a  soul !     (Exit.) 


Scene  XVIII.     Nikita,  Akulina,  Anisya,  and  Mitrich. 

Akulina  (taking  the  cups).  Well,  shall  I  pour  out  the 
tea  ?     (All  are  silent.) 

Mitrich  (bellowinx)).  0  Lord,  have  mercy  on  me,  sin. 
ful  man  !      (All  tremble.) 

Nikita  (lying  down  on  a  bench).  Oh,  I  feel  bad,  so 
bad.     Akulina,  where  is  the  accordion  ? 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  145 

Akulina.  The  accordion  ?  What  are  you  thinking 
about  ?  You  have  left  it  to  be  mended.  I  have  filled  the 
glasses.     Come  and  drink  ! 

NiKiTA.  I  don't  want  to.  Put  out  the  light —  Oh, 
I  feel  bad,  so  bad  !     ( Weeping.) 

Curtain. 


DRAMATIS  PERSONS    OF   ACT   IV. 

NlKITA.  MaTKENA. 

MlTRICH.  AnISYA. 

Neighbour.  Anyutka. 

Sponsor.  Suitor,  a  gloomy  peasant. 


ACT   IV. 

AiUumn.  Evening.  Tlic  moon  is  sliining.  Tlie  interior 
of  the  farmyard.  In  the  7niddlc,  the  vestibule;  on 
the  right,  the  warm  hut  and  the  gate ;  on  the  left,  the 
cold  hut  and  the  cellar.  In  the  house  arc  heard  con- 
versation and  drunken  shouts.  Neighbour  comes  out 
of  the  vestibule  and  calls  Anisi/a's  sponsor. 


Scene    I.     Sponsor  and  Neighbour. 

Neighbour.     Why  did  Akulina  not  come  out  ? 

Sponsor.  Why  did  she  not  come  out  ?  She  would 
like  to,  but  she  does  not  feel  well.  The  suitors  came  to 
see  the  bride,  but  she  is  lying  in  the  cold  hut  and  will 
not  show  up,  my  dear. 

Neighbour.     What  is  the  matter  ? 

Sponsor.  She  has  been  bewitched,  —  she  has  it  in  her 
belly. 

Neighbour.     You  don't  say  so  ? 

Sponsor.     I  do.     (She  whisiiers  something  in  her  car.) 

Neighbour.     Well,  what  a  sin !     The  suitors  will  find 

out  about  it. 

146 


THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS  147 

Sponsor.  How  are  they  to  find  out  ?  They  are  all 
drimk.  They  are  more  after  the  dowry.  They  are  giving 
the  girl  two  fur  coats,  six  bodices,  a  French  shawl,  a 
big  lot  of  linen,  and,  they  say,  two  hundred  roubles  in 
money. 

Neighbour.  What  pleasure  is  there  in  such  money  ? 
What  a  shame ! 

Sponsor.  Hush.  The  suitor  is  coming.  {TJiey  grow 
silent  and  walk  into  the  vestibule.) 

Scene  IL     Suitor  (alone,  coming  out  of  the  vestibule,  and 

hiccoughing). 

Suitor.  I  am  sweating.  Oh,  it  is  so  hot.  I  want  to 
cool  off  a  little.  {Stands  blowing.)  God  knows  how  it 
is  —  something  wrong  —  does  not  please  me —  Well, 
an  old  woman  — 

Scene  III.     Suitor  and  Matr^na. 

Matrena  (coming  out  of  the  vestibule).  I  was  look- 
ing for  the  suitor,  and  here  you  are.  Well,  my  dear, 
thank  the  Lord,  everything  is  done  honourably.  A  suitor 
must  not  brag.  T  do  not  even  know  how  to  brag.  You 
have  come  to  do  a  good  work,  and  God  will  grant  you  to 
thank  me  for  it  all  your  hfe.  The  bride,  you  know,  is  a 
rare  one.  You  will  not  find  such  a  girl  in  the  whole 
country. 

Suitor.  That  is  so,  if  only  we  don't  get  fooled  about 
the  money. 

Matrena.  Don't  mention  the  money !  She  has  all 
her  parents  have  left  her.  In  our  time  one  hundred  and 
fifty  roubles  are  not  a  small  matter. 

Suitor.  We  are  satisfied,  but  we  do  not  want  to 
wrong  our  child,  —  we  want  to  do  it  in  the  best  possible 
manner. 


148  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Matkena.  I  tell  you  the  truth,  suitor :  if  it  were  not 
for  me  you  would  not  get  her  in  a  lifetime.  The  Kor- 
milins  have  sent  to  inquire  about  her,  but  1  have  stopped 
them.  As  to  the  money,  I  will  tell  you  how  it  was : 
when  the  man  was  dying,  —  the  kingdom  of  heaven  be 
his,  —  he  told  the  widow  to  take  Nikita  to  the  house,  — 
my  son  has  told  me  so,  —  and  the  money  was  to  go 
to  Akulina.  Another  man  would  have  made  use  of  it, 
but  Nikita  gives  her  every  cent  that  belongs  to  her. 
Think  what  a  sum  it  is  ! 

Suitor.  People  say  that  there  was  more  money  left 
for  her.     My  son  is  a  shrewd  one  himself. 

Matkena.  Oh,  my  little  white  doves !  A  piece  of 
bread  looks  big  in  other  people's  hands.  She  gets  every 
cent  that  is  coming  to  her.  I  tell  you :  stop  all  delay  and 
clinch  the  bargain  at  once  !  The  girl  is  as  pretty  as  a 
beanstalk. 

Suitor.  That  is  so.  My  wife  and  I  have  been  won- 
dering v/hy  the  girl  has  not  come  out  ?  We  thought  she 
might  be  an  ailing  girl. 

Matrena.  Not  at  all.  She  is  not  a  sickly  girl.  There 
is  not  another  such  a  healthy  woman  in  the  whole  coun- 
try. She  is  so  plump  you  can't  pinch  her.  You  saw  her 
the  other  day.  She  is  a  great  worker.  It  is  true  she  is 
a  little  hard  of  hearing,  but  a  worm  bite  does  not  hurt  a 
good  apple.  She  did  not  come  out  because  she  has  had 
the  evil  eye  upon  her.  Somebody  has  bewitched  her.  I 
know  who  the  bitch  is  that  has  done  it.  They  knew 
that  the  match-makers  were  to  be  at  the  house,  so  they 
bewitched  her.  I  will  take  off  the  evil  eye.  To-morrow 
the  girl  will  be  up  again.  Have  no  doubts  about  the 
girl ! 

Suitor.     All  right,  —  the  affair  is  settled. 

Matrena.  That's  it.  Don't  back  out  again !  And 
don't  forget  me !  I  have  interceded  for  you,  so  don't 
forget  me ! 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  149 

A  Woman's  Voice  {in  the  vestibule).     Ivan,  let  us  go, 

—  it  is  time  ! 

SuiTOK.  Eight  away  !  {Exit.  People  crowd  in  the 
vestibule,  and  drive  away.) 

Scene  IV.     Anisya  and  Anyiitka. 

Anyutka  {running  out  of  the  vestibule  and  beckoning  to 
Anisya).     Mamma  1 

Anisya  {from  a  distance).     What  is  it  ? 

Anyutka.  Mamma,  come  here,  or  they  will  hear  me. 
{Goes  vnth  her  to  the  barn.) 

Anisya.     Well,  what  is  it  ?     Where  is  Akulina  ? 

Anyutka.  She  has  gone  to  the  granary.  She  is 
carrying  on  awfully  there !  Truly,  "  I  have  no  more 
strength,"  says  she.  "  I  will  cry  out,"  says  she,  "  as  loud 
as  I  can."     Truly. 

Anisya.  Maybe  she  can  wait.  Let  us  first  see  off  the 
guests. 

Anyutka.  Oh,  mamma  !  It  is  hard  for  her.  And  she 
is  so  angry.  "  Their  drinking  on  my  account  is  all  in  vain," 
says  she.  "I  wiU  not  marry.  I  will  sooner  die,"  says 
she.  Mamma,  I  am  afraid  she  may  die.  I  am  awfully 
afraid ! 

Anisya.  Don't  be  afraid,  she  won't.  Don't  go  to  her. 
Go !     {Anisya  and  Anyutka  exeunt.) 

Scene    V.     Mitrich  (alone.      Comes  from  the  gate   and 
picks  up  the  scattered  hay). 

Mitrich.  0  Lord,  merciful  St.  Nicholas !  What  a  lot 
of  liquor  they  have  used  up !  And  how  it  smells !  It 
stinks  even  here  in  the  yard  from  it.    No,  I  don't  want  it, 

—  go  to !  How  they  have  scattered  the  hay  !  They 
don't  eat  it,  but  only  nose  through  it.  There  will  be  a 
whole  bundle  of  it.    Oh,  what  a  smell !    Almost  under  my 


150  THE    POWEK    OF    DARKNESS 

nose.  Go  to !  ( Yawning.)  It  is  time  to  go  to  bed !  I 
dou't  want  to  go  into  the  house.  It  is  hovering  all  about 
my  nose.  It  smells  strong,  —  accursed  liquor!  (^Onc 
hears  the  people  departing.)  They  are  gone,  O  Lord, 
merciful  St.  Nicholas !  They  are  only  collaring  each 
other,  and  pulling  the  wool  over  each  other's  eyes.  It 
is  all  nonsense. 

Scene  VI.     Mitrich  and  Nikita. 

NiKiTA  (coming  out).  Mitrich,  go  on  the  oven !  I  will 
pick  it  up. 

Mitrich.  All  right.  Throw  it  to  the  sheep!  Well, 
have  you  seen  them  off  ? 

Nikita.  I  have,  but  things  don't  go  right.  I  don't 
know  what  will  happen. 

Mitrich.  Bosh  !  There  is  a  Foundhng  House  for  that. 
Throw  out  anything  you  please,  and  they  will  pick  it  up. 
Give  them  all  the  babies  you  want,  they  won't  ask  any 
questions.  They  even  give  money,  so  that  all  a  woman 
has  to  do  after  that  is  to  become  a  wet-nurse.  Nowadays 
these  things  are  done  very  simply. 

Nikita.  Look  here,  Mitrich,  don't  say  more  than  you 
need  to ! 

Mitrich.  What  do  I  care  ?  Sweep  away  the  track  as 
well  as  you  can  !  Oh,  how  you  smell  of  liquor !  I  will 
go  in.     (^Goes  away,  yawning.)     O  Lord  ! 

Scene  VII.     Nikita  (long  silent.     Sits  down  on  a  sleigh). 
Nikita.     Bad  business! 

Scene  VIII.     Nikita  and  Anisya. 

Anisya  (coming  out).     Where  are  you  ? 
Nikita.     Here  I  am. 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  151 

Anisya.  What  are  you  sitting  there  for  ?  There  is 
no  time  to  lose.     You  have  to  carry  it  out  at  once. 

NiKiTA.     What  are  we  going  to  do  ? 

Anisya.     Do  what  I  tell  you  ! 

NiKiTA.  You  had  better  take  it  to  the  Foundling 
House. 

Anisya.  You  carry  it  there,  if  you  want  to.  You  are 
ready  enough  to  do  something  nasty,  but  very  weak  in 
straightening  things  out. 

NiKfxA.     What  is  to  be  done  ? 

Anisya.  I  told  you  :  go  into  the  cellar  and  dig  a  hole 
there ! 

NiKiTA.     Can't  you  do  it  any  other  way  ? 

AxisYA  {mocking  him).  Any  other  way  ?  No,  you 
can't.  You  ought  to  have  thought  of  it  before.  Go 
where  I  tell  you  ! 

NiKiTA.  Oh,  it  is  a  bad  business  ! 

Scene  IX.     The  same  and  Anyutka. 

Anyutka.  Mamma !  grandmother  is  calling  you. 
Sister  must  have  a  baby,  —  truly,  —  it  has  been  crying. 

Anisya.  Don't  talk !  The  paralysis  take  you  !  The 
kittens  are  mewing.  Go  into  the  house  and  sleep !  Or 
I  will  teach  you  ! 

Anyutka.     Mamma  dear,  really,  upon  my  word  — 

Anisya  (raising  her  hand  against  her).  I  will  show 
you !     Don't  let  me  hear  a  word  from  you  ! 

Anyutka  {rvms  away). 

Anisya  {to  Nikita).  Go  and  do  as  I  tell  you !  Or 
look  out !     {Exit.) 

Scene  X.     NiMta  {alone,  long  silent). 

Nikita.  Bad  business !  Oh,  these  women !  It  is 
bad !     She  says  I  ought  to   have  thought  of  it    before. 


152  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

When  was  I  to  have  thought  of  it  before  ?  When 
was  I  to  have  thought  of  it  ?  Last  year  it  was  Anisya 
that  stuck  to  me.  Well  ?  Am  I  a  monk  ?  The  mas- 
ter died  and  I  covered  up  the  sin  by  marrying  her, 
as  is  proper.  There  was  no  fault  of  mine.  Such  things 
often  happen.  And  then  the  powders.  Did  I  persuade 
her  to  do  so  ?  If  I  had  known  it  at  the  time  I  would 
have  killed  the  bitch.  Really,  I  would.  The  slut  has 
made  me  a  part  of  her  nastiness.  Ever  since  then  I  have 
loathed  her.  When  my  mother  told  me  about  it  I  began 
to  loathe  her,  and  could  not  look  into  her  eyes.  How 
could  I,  after  that,  get  along  with  her  ?  And  so  it 
started.  Then  this  girl  began  to  cling  to  me.  Why  not 
I  ?  If  not  I,  some  one  else  would  have  done  it.  And 
now  what  has  come  of  it !  Again  it  is  not  my  fault.  Oh ! 
it's  a  bad  business.  (Sits  in  thought.)  It  is  a  bold  thing 
the  women  have  thought  out.     No,  I  won't  do  it ! 

Scene  XL     Nikita  and  Matr«5na  (with  a  lantern  and  a 
spade,  walking  hurriedly). 

Matrena.  Don't  sit  there  like  a  sitting  hen !  Your 
wife  told  you  to  do  something.     Are  you  ready  ? 

Nikita.     What  are  you  going  to  do  ? 

Matrena.  We  know  what  to  do.  You  attend  to 
your  business  ! 

Nikita,     You  will  get  me  entangled. 

Matrena,  What  ?  Do  you  intend  to  back  out  ?  You 
have  gone  so  far,  and  now  you  want  to  back  out. 

Nikita.  It  is  a  terrible  thing !  But  the  thing  is 
living ! 

Matrena.  A  living  thing  !  It  is  barely  living.  Where 
would  you  put  it  ?  Take  it  to  the  Foundling  House,  and 
it  will  die  all  the  same.  Then  everybody  will  know  it, 
and  the  girl  will  be  on  our  hands, 

Nikita.     But  if  they  should  find  it  out  ? 


THE    POWER    OE    DARKNESS  153 

Matrena.  It  is  in  your  own  house,  and  you  can  do 
it  right.  We  will  fix  it  so  that  not  a  word  of  it  will  be 
heard.  Do  as  I  tell  you  !  But  we  are  women  and  can't 
get  along  without  a  man.  Take  the  spade !  Go  down 
and  fix  it !     I  will  hold  the  lantern. 

NiKiTA.     What  shall  I  fix  ? 

Matrena  {in  a  whis'per).  Dig  a  hole  !  Then  we  will 
take  it  down  and  bury  it  at  once.  There  she  is,  calling 
again.     Go,  I  say.     I  must  go. 

NiKiTA.     Well,  is  the  child  dead  ? 

Matrena.  Of  course,  it  is.  Only  do  it  more  lively ! 
The  people  are  not  yet  asleep,  and  they,  the  accursed  ones, 
may  hear  and  see  it.  The  officer  passed  here  in  the  even- 
ing. So  go !  {Giving  him  the  spade.)  Go  down  in  the 
cellar !  Dig  a  hole  in  the  corner '  The  earth  is  soft 
there,  —  and  then  you  will  smooth  it  out  again.  Mother 
earth  won't  tell :  it  will  be  as  smooth  as  though  a  cow 
had  licked  it  down.     Go,  go,  my  son  ! 

NiKiTA.  You  will  get  me  entangled.  Go  to !  Really, 
I  will  go  away.     Do  yourselves  as  you  please ! 

Scene  XII.     The  same  and  Anisya. 

Anisya  {from  the  door).     WeU,  have  you  dug  it  ? 

Matrena.  What  did  you  come  here  for  ?  What  have 
you  done  with  it  ? 

Anisya.  I  have  covered  it  with  a  bag,  so  it  won't  be 
heard.     Well,  hasn't  he  dug  it  yet  ? 

Matrena.     He  does  not  want  to. 

Anisya  {rushing  out  in  fury).  He  does  not  want  to  ! 
And  does  he  want  to  feed  lice  in  the  prison  ?  I  will  go 
at  once  and  tell  the  officer.  I  will  make  an  end  of  it 
at  once.     I  will  tell  him  everything ! 

NiKiTA  {frightened).     What  will  you  tell  ? 

Anisya.  What  ?  Everything  !  Who  took  the  money  ? 
You  !     {^Nikita  is  silent.)   And  who  gave  him  the  poison  ? 


154  THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS 

I  did.  But  you  knew,  you  knew,  you  knew !  We  had 
agreed  upon  it. 

Matkexa.  That  will  do  !  Nildta,  don't  be  so  stubborn  ! 
What  is  to  be  done  ?  You  must  take  the  trouble !  Go, 
my  dear ! 

Anisya.  I  declare  !  The  pretty  fellow !  He  does  not 
want  to !  You  have  wronged  me  enough !  You  have 
been  misusing  me,  and  now  is  my  turn.  Go,  I  say,  or  I 
will  show  you  vfhat  I  can  do.  Take  the  spade,  here ! 
Go! 

NiKiTA.  Don't  insist  so !  {Takes  the  spade,  hut  reluc- 
tantly.')    If  I  don't  want  to  I  won't  go. 

Anisya.  You  won't  ?  {Begins  to  cry  oiit.)  Oh,  peo- 
ple, people ! 

Matrena  {putting  her  hand  on  her  mouth).  What  are 
you  doing  ?  Are  you  insane  ?  He  will  go.  Go,  my 
son,  go,  my  dear  ! 

Anisya.     I  will  call  for  help  at  once. 

NiKiTA.  Stop  it !  Oh,  what  people  they  are !  Hurry 
up !    I  will  do  it.     {Goes  to  the  cellar.) 

Matrena.  Yes,  my  son,  you  knew  how  to  have  a 
good  time,  —  know  how  to  hide  your  crime  ! 

Anisya  {still  excited).  He  and  his  slut  have  been  mak- 
ing fun  of  me,  —  that  will  stop  now!  I  sha'n't  be  the 
only  one.  Let  him  be  a  murderer,  too  1  He  will  know 
how  it  feels. 

Matrena.  Well,  well,  how  you  are  blustering ! 
Woman,  don't  be  so  angry,  but  do  everything  softly  and 
slowly,  as  is  proper.  Go  to  the  girl !  He  will  do  the 
work.  {Follows  him  with  the  lantern.  Nikita  goes  into 
the  cellar.) 

Anisya.  I  will  make  him  choke  the  life  out  of  his 
accursed  offspring.  {Still  in  excitement.)  I  am  tired 
having  Peter's  bones  upon  my  own  conscience.  Let  him 
find  out  what  it  is !  I  will  have  no  pity  on  myself,  I 
will  not,  I  have  said. 


THE    POWER    OF    DAKKNESS  155 

NlKlTA  {from  the  cellar).     Let  me  see  the  light ! 

Matkena  (j)uts  down  the  lantern^  to  Anisya).  He  is 
digging.     Go  and  bring  it ! 

AxisYA.  Watch  him  or  the  accursed  one  will  go 
away.    I  will  bring  it  out. 

Matrexa.  Say,  don't  forget  to  baptize  it !  If  you 
can't  do  it,  I  will.     Have  you  a  cross  ? 

ANisYA.     I  know  where  to  find  one.    {Exit.) 


Scene  XIII.     Matr^na  {alone)  and  Nikita  {in  the  cellar). 

Matrena,  How  the  woman  has  flared  up  !  Of  course, 
it  is  provoking.  God  aid  us  in  covering  up  the  matter, 
and  let  there  be  an  end  of  it !  We  will  get  rid  of  the 
girl  without  a  crime.  My  son  wiU  then  live  quietly. 
They  have  plenty  of  everything  m  the  house,  thank  God. 
He  wiU  not  forget  me.  What  would  they  be  without 
Matrena.  They  would  not  be  able  to  think  out  a  thing. 
{Into  the  cellar.)     Are  you  done,  my  son  ? 

NiKiTA  {coming  out  of  the  cellar.  His  head  is  visible). 
Well  ?  Are  you  going  to  bring  it  ?  "Why  are  you  crawl- 
ing so  ?     If  it  is  to  be  done,  do  it  quick ! 


Scene  XIV.  The  same  and  Anfsya.  {Matrena  walks 
over  to  the  vestibule  and  meets  Anisya.  Anisya  comes 
out  with  the  baby  swaddled  in  rags.) 

Matrena.     Have  you  crossed  it  ? 

Anisya.     Of  course.     I  took  it  away  by  force.     She 

would  not  let  me  have  it.     {Comes  up  to  Nikita  and  gives 

it  to  him.) 

Nikita  {n^t  taking  it).     Take  it  down  yourself 
Anisya.     Take  it,  I  say.    {She  throws  the  child  to  him.) 
Nikita  {catching  it).    Alive  !     Mother,  it  is  moving ! 

It  is  alive  !     What  shall  I  — 


156  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anisya  (taking  the  child  out  of  his  hands  and  throwing 
it  into  the  cellar).  Strangle  it  at  once  and  it  won't  live. 
(Fashes  Nikita  down-stairs.)  This  is  your  affair.  Make 
an  end  of  it ! 

Matrena  {sitting  down  on  the  top  step).  He  is  com- 
passionate. It  is  hard  for  him.  Well,  it  is  his  own  sin. 
{Anisya  staiids  over  the  cellar.  Matrena  sits  down  on  the 
steps  of  the  porch  and  looks  at  her.)  Oh,  how  frightened 
he  got !  Suppose  it  is  hard,  —  still  it  has  to  be  done. 
What  else  could  we  do  ?  When  you  come  to  think  of  it : 
how  some  people  beg  for  children !  But  God  does  not 
grant  them  any,  and  they  get  only  still-born  children. 
There,  for  example,  the  pope's  wife  —  and  here  is  a  liv- 
ing child,  and  nobody  wants  it.  (Looking  down  into  the 
cellar.)     He  must  be  through.     (To  Anisya.)     Well? 

Anisya  (looking  doivn  into  the  cellar).  He  has  covered 
it  with  a  board  and  is  sitting  down  on  it.  He  has  done 
it,  no  doubt. 

Matrena.  Oh,  oh  !  I  should  like  to  get  along  without 
sinning,  but  what  is  to  be  done  ? 

Nikita  (coming  out,  shivering).  It  is  still  living !  I 
can't !     It  is  living  ! 

Anisya.  If  it  is  living,  where  are  you  going  ?  ( Wants 
to  stop  him.) 

Nikita  (rushes  against  her).  Go  away,  or  I  will  kill 
you  !  (Seizes  her  hand ;  she  tears  herself  away  ;  he  runs 
after  her  with  the  spade.  Matrena  runs  toward  him  and 
stops  him.  Anisya  runs  upon  the  porch.  Matrena  wants 
to  take  away  the  spade.) 

Nikita  (to  his  mother).  I  will  kill  you,  you,  too !  Get 
away !  (Matrena  runs  away  to  Aiiisya  on  the  porch. 
Nikita  stops.)     I  will  kill  you  !     I  will  kill  everybody  ! 

Matrena.  He  does  this  from  fright.  Never  mind,  it 
will  pass. 

Nikita.  What  have  they  done?  What  have  they 
done  with  me  ?     How  it  cried  !  —  How  it  crunched  under 


THE    POWEK    OF    DAKKNESS  157 

me !  What  have  they  done  with  me  ?  And  it  is  ahve, 
still  ahve !  (Silent  and  listenmg.)  It  is  ciying,  oh,  how 
it  is  crying.      (Huns  to  the  eellar.) 

Matrexa  (to  Anisya).  He  is  running  down  to  get  it 
buried,  no  doubt.     Nikita,  do  you  want  the  lantern  ? 

NlKiTA  (does  not  answer.  Listening  at  the  cellar).  I 
do  not  hear  it.  It  is  quiet.  (Goes  away  and  stops.)  Oh, 
how  the  bones  crunched  under  me  !  Crr  —  err  —  WTiat 
have  they  done  with  me  ?  (Listens  again.)  Again  it 
cries,  really  it  does.  What  is  it  ?  Mother,  0  mother ! 
(Goes  wp  to  her.) 

Matrexa.     What  is  it,  my  son  ? 

NiKiTA.  Mother  dear,  I  can't  finish  it.  I  can't. 
Mother  dear,  take  pity  on  me ! 

Matrena.  Oh,  how  frightened  you  are  !  Go,  go,  take 
some  liquor  to  brace  you  up. 

NiKiTA.  Mother  dear,  I  am  undone.  What  have  you 
done  with  me  ?  Oh,  how  those  bones  did  crunch,  and 
how  it  cried  !  —  Mother  dear,  what  have  you  done  with 
me  ?     ( Walks  away  and  sits  doivii  on  the  sleigh.) 

Matrena.  Go,  my  son,  and  take  a  drink !  It  makes 
one  feel  bad  to  do  such  things  at  night-time.  But  let 
day  come,  and  let  another  day  pass,  and  you  will 
forget  to  think  of  it.  Wait  a  bit,  and  we  will  get 
the  girl  married,  and  we  will  think  no  more  of  it. 
But  you  go  and  take  a  drink  !  I  will  fix  everything 
in  the  cellar. 

NiKiTA  (shuddering).  Is  there  any  liquor  left  ?  I  will 
take  a  drink.  (Exit.  Anisya,  who  has  been  standing  all 
the  time  near  the  vestibule,  steps  silently  aside.) 

Scene  XV.     Matrena  and  Anisya. 

Matrena.  Go,  go,  my  dear !  I  will  go  down  in  the 
cellar  myself,  and  will  bury  it.  Where  did  he  throw 
the  spade?     (Finds  the  spade   and  goes   half-ivay  down 


158  THE   POWEK   OF   DARKNESS 

into  the  cellar.)  Anisya,  come  here  and  hold  the  lantern 
for  me  ! 

Anisya.     And  he  ? 

Mateena.  He  is  dreadfully  frightened.  You  went 
for  him  too  stiffly.  Never  miud,  he  will  come  to.  God  be 
with  him !  I  will  do  the  work  myself.  Put  the  lantern 
here.  I  shall  be  able  to  see.  {Matrena  disappears  in 
the  cellar.) 

Anisya  (toward  the  door,  throtigh  which  Nihita  has 
goTie).  Well,  are  you  through  celebrating  ?  You  have 
been  spreading  yourself.  Now  wait  and  see  how  it  feels  ! 
You  won't  be  so  dashing  after  this ! 

Scene  XVI.     The  same  and  Nikita  (running  out  of  the 
vestibule,  toward  the  cellar). 

Nikita.     Mother,  0  mother  ! 

Matrena  {sticking  her  head  out  of  the  cellar).  What 
is  it,  my  son  ? 

Nikita  (listening).  Don't  bury  it !  It  is  alive.  Don't 
you  hear  it  ?  It  is  alive  !  Do  you  hear  it  cry  ?  —  I  hear 
it  — 

Matrena.  How  can  it  cry  ?  You  have  crushed  it 
flat.     You  have  smashed  the  whole  head. 

Nikita.  What  is  this?  (Closes  his  ears.)  It  is  cry- 
ing still!  I  have  forfeited  my  hfe,  I  have  forfeited  it! 
What  have  they  done  with  me  ?  Where  shall  I  go  ? 
(Sits  down  on  the  porch.) 

Curtain. 


VAEIANT 

Instead  of  Scenes  XIII.,  XIV.,  XV.,  and  XVI.  of  Act 
IV.,  the  following  variant  may  be  read. 

PaktIL 

Eoom  of  Act  I. 

Scene  I.  Anyutka  {undressed,  on  the  door  bench,  under 
a  caftan).  Mitrich  {sitting  on  the  hanging  bed 
and  smoking). 

Mitrich.  I  declare,  they  have  filled  the  room  with 
the  smell  of  liquor,  —  pea-pie  choke  them  !  They  have 
poured  out  a  lot !  I  can't  get  rid  of  it  by  smoking.  It 
just  stays  in  my  nose.  0  Lord  !  It  is  time  to  go  to  sleep. 
{Goes  up  to  the  little  lamp  and  wants  to  turn  it  down.) 

AxYUTKA  {leaping  up  and  sitting  doivn).  Grandfather, 
please,  don't  put  it  out ! 

Mitrich.     Why  not  ? 

Anyutka.  There  has  been  such  a  noise  in  the  yard. 
{Listening.)  Do  you  hear  ?  They  have  gone  to  the 
granary  again. 

Mitrich.  What  is  that  to  you  ?  They  don't  ask  you 
about  it  ?  Lie  down  and  go  to  sleep  !  I  will  turn  out  the 
light.     {Turns  it  doivn.) 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  golden  one!  Don't  put  out 
the  light !  Let  it  burn  a  wee  little  bit,  or  it  will  frighten 
me. 

Mitrich  {laughing.)  All  right,  all  right.  (Sits  down 
near  her.)     What  frightens  you  ? 

169 


160  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anyutka.  How  can  I  help  being  frightened,  grand- 
father !  Sister  was  suffering  so.  She  struck  her  head 
against  the  flour  box.  {In  a  whisper).  I  know  —  she 
wants  to  get  a  baby  —     Maybe  it  is  born  now  — 

MiTRiCH.  You  imp,  the  frogs  may  kick  you ! 
You  must  know  everything !  Lie  down  and  sleep  !  {An- 
yutka lies  down).  That's  it.  {Covers  her.)  That's  it.  If 
you  know  much,  you  will  soon  get  old. 

Anyutka.     And  will  you  go  on  the  oven  ? 

MiTRiCH.  Where  else  ?  Silly  girl !  She  wants  to 
know  everything.  {Covers  her  still  more  and  rises  to  go.) 
Lie  like  this  and  sleep  !     {Goes  to  the  oven.) 

Anyutka.     It  cried  once,  and  now  you  can't  hear  it. 

MiTRiCH.  0  Lord,  merciful  St.  Nicholas  !  What  is  it 
you  can't  hear  ? 

Anyutka.     The  baby. 

MiTRiCH.     You  can't  hear  it  because  there  is  none. 

Anyutka.  But  I  heard  it,  truly,  I  did.  Such  a  thin 
voice. 

Mitrich.  You  did  not  hear  it.  What  you  heard  was 
a  girl  crying,  for  the  bogie-man  put  her  in  a  sack  and 
took  her  away. 

Anyutka.     What  bogie-man  ? 

Mitrich.  The  bogie-man,  that's  all.  {Climbing  on 
the  oven.)  The  oven  feels  good  to-day,  —  it  is  warm. 
Fine  !     0  Lord,  merciful  St.  Nicholas  ! 

Anyutka.     Grandfather,  are  you  going  to  sleep  ? 

Mitrich.  Wliat  did  you  think  ?  That  I  was  going  to 
sing  ?     {Silence.) 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  0  grandfather !  They  are 
digging !  Upon  my  word,  they  are.  Do  you  hear  ? 
Truly,  they  are  digging. 

Mitrich.  What  nonsense !  Digging !  Digging  at 
night !  Who  is  digging  ?  The  cow  is  scratching  herself. 
And  you  say:  digging.  Sleep,  I  say,  or  I  will  put  out 
the  light  altogether. 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  161 

Anyutka.  Darling,  grandfather,  don't  put  it  out !  I 
won't  do  it  again,  upon  my  word,  I  won't.  I  am  fright- 
ened. 

MiTKiCH.  Frightened  ?  Don't  be  afraid,  —  there  is 
nothing  to  frighten  you.  You  are  afraid  yourself,  so  you 
think  something  frightens  you.  How  can  you  help  be- 
ing frightened  if  you  are  afraid  ?  What  a  foolish  girl ! 
(Silence.     A  cricket.) 

Anyutka  (in  a  whisper).  Grandfather,  0  grandfather  ! 
Are  you  asleep  ? 

MiTRiCH.     Well,  what  is  it  again  ? 

Anyutka.     What  is  a  bogie-man  ? 

MiTRiCH,  I'll  tell  you.  If  a  child  won't  go  to  sleep, 
just  as  you  are  doing  now%  he  comes  with  a  sack  and 
whisks  her  into  it.  Then  he  puts  in  his  own  head, 
raises  her  shirt,  and  begins  to  whip  her. 

Anyutka.     What  does  he  whip  her  with  ? 

MiTKiCH.     With  a  bath  broom. 

Anyutka.     But  he  can't  see  inside  the  sack ! 

MiTRiCH.     Never  mind,  he  can. 

Anyutka.     I  will  bite  him. 

MiTRiCH.     No,  dear,  you  won't. 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  somebody  is  coming  !  "V\Tio 
is  it  ?     0  mother,  who  is  it  ? 

MiTEiCH.  Let  them  come  !  What  do  you  want  ?  I 
suppose  it  is  your  mother. 

Scene  II.     The  same  and  Anisya  (enter). 

Anisya.  Anyutka !  (Anytitha  pretends  to  he  asleep.) 
Mitrich ! 

MiTRiCH.     What  ? 

Anisya.  Why  are  you  burning  the  lamp  ?  We  will 
sleep  in  the  cold  hut. 

Mitrich.  I  have  just  undressed  myself.  I  wiU  put 
it  out. 


162  THE    POWER   OF   DARKNESS 

Anisya  (looking  for  something  in  the  coffer,  and  grum- 
hling).     You  never  can  find  a  thing  when  you  need  it. 

MiTKiCH.     What  are  you  looking  for  ? 

Anisya.  I  am  looking  for  a  cross  to  baptize  it  with. 
God  grant  it  will  die !  It  will  be  a  sin  to  let  it  die 
uubaptized. 

MiTRiCH.  Of  course,  you  must  do  everything  as  is 
proper.    Well,  have  you  found  it  ? 

Anisya.     I  have.    {Exit.) 

Scene  III.     Mitrich  and  Anyutka. 

MiTRiCH.  That's  it.  I  would  have  given  her  mine. 
O  Lord ! 

Anyutka  {jumping  down  and  tremlling).  Oh,  oh, 
grandfather !  Don't  fall  asleep,  for  Christ's  sake  !  I  am 
afraid. 

Mitrich.     What  are  you  afraid  of  ? 

Anyutka.  The  baby  will,  no  doubt,  die.  The  midwife 
baptized  Aunt  Arina's  baby,  and  it  died,  too. 

Mitrich.     If  it  will  die  they  will  bury  it. 

Anyutka.  Maybe  it  would  not  have  died  if  Grand- 
motlier  Matrt^na  were  not  here.  I  heard  what  grand- 
mother said,  truly,  I  did. 

Mitrich.  What  did  you  hear  ?  Sleep,  I  say  !  Cover 
up  your  head,  that's  all. 

Anyutka.     If  it  should  live,  I  would  take  care  of  it. 

Mitrich  {bellowing).     O  Lord  ! 

Anyutka.     Where  will  they  put  it  ? 

Mitrich.  They  wiU  put  it  where  it  belongs.  It  is 
not  your  sorrow.  Sleep,  I  say !  Mother  will  come  and 
will  give  it  to  you  !     {Silence.) 

Anyutka.  Grandfather!  They  did  not  kill  the  girl 
you  told  me  about  ? 

Mitrich.  What  girl  ?  Oh,  that  one  !  She  came  out 
all  right. 


THE    POWEK    OF    DARKNESS  163 

AnyiltTka.  Grandfather,  you  told  me  they  found  her, 
didn't  you  ? 

MiTKiCH.     Yes,  they  did. 

Anyutka.     Where  did  they  find  her  ?     Tell  me. 

MlTRiCH.  They  found  her  in  their  house.  The  soldiers 
came  to  the  village  and  began  to  rummage  through  the 
houses.  In  one  of  them  that  girl  was  lying  on  her  stomach. 
They  wanted  to  strike  her.  It  made  me  feel  bad,  and  so  I 
picked  her  up,  but  she  kept  kicking.  She  made  herself 
heavy,  as  though  she  weighed  two  hundred  pounds,  and 
she  kept  scratching  anything  she  got  into  her  hands,  so 
that  it  was  hard  to  get  away  from  her.  And  so  I  picked 
her  up  and  patted  her  on  her  head.  She  was  as  rough  as 
a  hedgehog.  I  patted  her  and  patted  her  until  she  quieted 
down.  I  soaked  a  piece  of  hardtack  and  gave  it  to  her. 
She  understood  what  I  wanted.  She  ate  it.  What  was  I 
to  do  with  her.?  We  took  her  along.  We  fed  her,  and 
she  got  used  to  us.  We  took  her  along  on  our  expedition, 
and  she  went  with  us.     She  was  a  nice  girl. 

Anyutka.     Wasn't  she  baptized  ? 

MiTRiCH.  I  don't  know.  They  said  she  was  not  com- 
pletely baptized,  because  her  people  were  not  like  ours. 

Anyutka.     Was  she  a  German  ? 

MiTRiCH.  German !  No.  She  was  not  a  German,  but 
an  Asiatic.  They  are  all  like  Jews,  but  not  exactly  Jews. 
They  were  Poles,  but  Asiatics.  Krudles,  —  Krugles  is 
their  name,  —  well,  I  have  forgotten  which  it  is.  We 
called  the  girl  Sasha.  Sasha  was  a  pretty  child.  I  have 
forgotten  everything  else,  but  I  see  the  girl  right  before  me, 
pea-pie  choke  her  !  This  is  all  I  remember  from  my  whole 
soldier's  life.  I  only  remember  how  they  used  to  flog  me, 
and  the  girl.  She  used  to  hold  on  to  my  neck,  and  I 
carried  her.  You  could  not  find  a  finer  child.  Later  we 
gave  her  up.  The  captain's  wife  took  her  for  a  daughter. 
And  she  turned  out  a  fine  woman.  The  soldiers  were  so 
sorry  to  part  with  her ! 


iD 


164  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  I  remember  how  father  died. 
You  were  not  living  at  our  house  then.  He  called  up 
Nikita  and  said  :  "  Forgive  me,"  says  he,  "  Nikita  !  "  and 
he  burst  out  crying.  (Sighing.)  It  was  such  a  pity  to 
see  him. 

MiTRicH.     Yes,  that's  so. 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  O  grandfather !  There  is 
again  a  noise  in  the  cellar.  Oh,  my  dear !  Oh,  grand- 
father, they  are  doing  something  to  the  baby.  It  is  such 
a  tiny  one.  Oh,  oh  !  (Covers  up  her  head  and  weeps.) 
MiTPJCH  (listening).  Yes,  they  are  up  to  something 
bad.  Those  women  are  a  bad  lot.  You  can't  say  much 
good  of  the  men,  but  the  women  —  they  are  like  wild 
beasts.     They  fear  nothing. 

Anyutka  (rising).     Grandfather,  0  grandfather ! 
MiTRiCH.     Well,  what  is  it  ? 

Anyutka.  The  other  day  a  wanderer  stopped  here 
overnight.  He  said  that  if  a  baby  died  its  little  soul 
went  straight  to  heaven.     Is  it  true  ? 

MiTPJCH.     I  don't  know.     I  suppose  it  does.     Why  ? 
Anyutka.     I  should  like  to  die.     (Soiling.) 
MiTPJCH.     If  you  die  you  don't  count. 
Anyutka.     Up  to  ten  years  you  are  a  child,  and  your 
soul  may  go  to  God.     After  that  you  get  spoiled. 

MiTRicii.  I  should  say  you  do  !  How  can  you  women 
help  spoiling  ?  Who  teaches  you  ?  What  do  you  see  ? 
What  do  you  hear  ?  Nothing  but  badness.  I  have  not 
learned  much,  but  I  know  at  least  something,  not  hke  a 
village  woman.  What  is  a  village  woman  ?  Nothing  but 
dirt.  There  are  many  millions  of  you  women  in  Kussia, 
but  you  are  as  blind  as  moles,  —  you  know  nothing.  All 
you  know  is  how  to  fan  off  a  cow's  death,  and  all  kinds  of 
enchantments,  and  how  to  take  children  to  a  sitting  hen. 
Anyutka.  Mamma  has  taken  me  there,  too. 
MiTPJCH.  Precisely,  that's  it.  There  are  milhons  of 
you  women  and  girls,  but  you  are  all  like  the  beasts 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  165 

of  the  forest.  Just  as  one  has  been  born,  so  she  dies. 
She  has  neither  seen  nor  heard  anything.  A  man  will 
learn  something,  if  nowhere  else,  at  least  in  the  inn,  or 
by  some  chance,  in  prison,  or  in  the  army,  as  I  have. 
But  what  about  a  woman  ?  She  does  not  know  a  thing 
about  God,  —  nay,  she  does  not  know  one  day  from 
another.  They  creep  about  like  blind  pups,  and  stick 
their  heads  into  the  manure.  All  they  kuow  is  their 
foolish  songs  :  Ho,  ho,  ho,  ho  —  But  what  this  ho-ho  is 
they  don't  know  themselves. 

Anyutka.  Grandfather,  I  know  nearly  half  of  the 
Lord's  prayer. 

MiTRiCH.  You  know  a  lot !  Nor  can  one  expect  it 
of  you.  Who  is  teaching  you  ?  All  the  teaching 
you  get  is  from  a  drunken  peasant  with  the  reins.  I  do 
not  knovv  who  will  be  responsible  for  you.  The  ser- 
geant or  the  corporal  is  responsible  for  the  recruits. 
But  there  is  nobody  who  may  be  made  responsible 
for  you  w^omen.  You  women  are  like  riotous  cattle 
without  a  shepherd,  —  a  stupid  set  you  are.  A  most 
senseless  lot ! 

Anyutka.     What  is  it  going  to  be  ? 

MiTEiCH.  What  ?  —  Cover  up  your  head  and  go  to 
sleep.     O  Lord !     {Silence.     A  cricket.) 

Anyutka  (leaping  up).  Grandfather !  Something  is 
calling  in  the  street !  Upon  my  word,  somebody  is  calling. 
Grandfather  dear,  he  is  coming  this  way. 

MiTRiCH.     I  tell  you,  cover  yourself  up ! 


Scene    IV.     The  same,  Nikita,  and  Matr^na. 

Nikita  (enter).  What  have  they  done  with  me  ? 
What  have  they  done  with  me  ? 

Matrena.  Take  a  drink,  my  dear,  take  a  drink  1 
(Jjfets  the  liquor  and  puts  it  on  the  table.) 


166  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

NiKlTA.     Give  it  to  me.     I  want  to  drink. 

Matrena.  Softly  !  They  are  not  asleep  yet.  Here, 
drink ! 

NiKiTA.  What  is  that  for  ?  Why  did  you  think  that 
out !     Could  you  not  have  carried  it  anywhere  ? 

Matrena  (m  a  'whisper).  Sit  down  awhile,  and  drink 
some  more,  and  take  a  smoke !  This  will  drive  away 
your  bad  thoughts. 

NiKiTA.  Mother  dear,  I  am  undone.  When  it  cries, 
and  the  little  bones  begin  to  crunch,  err — err,  I  lose 
my  manhood. 

Matrena.  Don't  mention  it !  You  are  saying  un- 
seemly things.  Of  course  it  makes  one  feel  bad  to  do 
such  things  at  night-time.  But  let  day  come,  and  another 
day  pass,  and  you  will  forget  about  it.  ( Goes  up  to  Nikita, 
and  puts  her  hand  on  his  shoulder.) 

Nikita.  Go  away  from  me  !  What  have  you  done 
with  me  ? 

Matrena.  My  son,  don't  say  that !  ( Takes  hold  of 
his  hand.) 

Nikita.  Go  away  from  me  !  I  will  kill  you  !  I  don't 
care  for  anything  now !     I  will  kill  you  ! 

Matrena.  Oh,  oh,  how  frightened  you  are  !  You  had 
better  go  to  bed. 

Nikita.     I  have  no  place  to  go  to.     I  am  lost. 

Matrena  {shaking  her  head).  Oh,  oh  !  I  will  go  and 
fix  it  all.  And  he  will  sit  here  until  he  feels  better. 
{Exit.) 

Scene  V.     Nikita,  Mitrich,  and  Anyutka. 

Nikita  {sits  with  his  hands  over  his  face,  ivhile  Mitrich 
and  Anyutka  keep  quiet).  Tt  cries,  really  it  cries, 
hear,  hear  —  I  hear  it.  She  will  bury  it,  she  will ! 
{Runs  to  the  door.)  Mother,  do  not  bury  it.  It  is 
alive  I 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  167 

Scene  VI.     The  same  and  Matr^na. 

Matrena  (returning,  in  a  whisper).  Christ  be  with 
you  !  What  are  you  thinking  about  ?  How  can  it  be 
ahve  ?     All  its  bones  are  crushed. 

NiKiTA.     Give  me  some  more  liquor !     {Drinks) 

Matrena.  Go,  my  son !  You  will  now  fall  asleep, 
and  all  will  pass. 

NiKiTA  {stands  and.  listens).  It  is  alive !  I  hear  it 
cry.     Don't  you  hear  it  ?     Listen  ! 

Matrena  {in  a  whisper).     No,  I  don't. 

NiKiTA.  Mother  dear !  I  have  forfeited  my  life. 
What  have  you  done  with  me  ?  Where  shall  I  go  ? 
{Runs  out  of  the  room.     Matrena  follows  him.) 

Scene  VII.     Mitrich  and  Anyiitka. 

Anyutka.     Grandfather  dear,  they  have  killed  it ! 

Mitrich  {angrily).  Sleep,  I  say !  Oh,  may  the  frogs 
kick  you  !  I  will  strike  you  with  the  bath  broom !  Sleep, 
I  say! 

AJnyutka.  Grandfather,  golden  one!  Somebody  is 
taking  me  by  the  shoulder !  Somebody  is  taking  me 
with  his  big  hands  !  Grandfather,  truly  I  will  go  away 
from  here.  Grandfather,  golden  one,  let  me  come  to  you 
on  the  oven  !  Let  me  come,  for  Christ's  sake —  He  is 
taking  hold  of  me  —  He  is  taking  me  —  Ah  !  {Buns 
to  the  oven.) 

Mitrich.  I  declare,  they  have  frightened  the  girl,  — 
those  sluts,  —  may  the  frogs  kick  them  !     Climb  up  ! 

Anyutka  {climbing  on  the  oven).     Don't  go  away  ! 

Mitrich.  Wliere  should  I  go  ?  Climb  up !  O  Lord, 
St.  Nicholas  !  Most  Holy  Virgin  of  Kazan  !  —  How  they 
have  frightened  the  girl !  ( Covering  her  up)  Silly  little 
girl !  The  sluts  have  frightened  her,  though,  —  pea-pie 
choke  them! 

Curtain. 


DRAMATIS   PEESON^    OF   ACT   V. 

NiKiTA.  Second  Girl. 

Anisya.  Officer. 

Akulina.  Driver. 

Akim.  Best  Man. 

Matrena.  Suitor. 

Anyutka.  Akulina's  Husband. 

Marina.  Elder. 

Marina's  Husband.      Guests,  Women,  Girls,  at 

First  Girl.  the  Wedding. 

ACT   V. 

The  threshing-floor.  Nearest  to  the  audience,  the  grain- 
ricks  ;  on  the  left,  the  even  floor ;  on  the  right,  the  ham 
of  the  threshing-floor.  Tlie  doors  of  the  ham  are 
open.  Through  the  doors  strata  is  seen ;  in  the  hack- 
ground,  the  yard.  Songs  and  tainhourines  are  heard. 
Two  girls  walk  on  the  path  near  the  ham,  toward  the 
house. 

Scene  I.     Two  girls. 

First  Girl.  You  see,  we  have  come  without  getting 
our  shoes  dirty ;  through  the  village  the  road  is  dreadful ! 
so  dirty.      (They  stop  to  clean  their  shoes  with  straw.) 

First  Girl  (looking  into  the  straw  and  seeing  some- 
thing).    What  is  this  ? 

Second  Girl  (looking  in).  That  is  Mitrich,  their  hired 
hand.     See  how  drunk  he  is  ! 

First  Girl.     He  must  have  been  drinking  heavily. 

1G8 


THE    POWER    OF    DAEKNESS  1G9 

Second  Girl.     Evidently  before  this  day. 

First  Girl.  Look  !  He  evidently  came  to  fetch  some 
straw.  The  rope  is  still  in  his  hands,  just  as  he  fell 
asleep  with  it. 

SEGO}ii>  GiUL  {listeni7ig).  They  are  still  receiving.  Evi- 
dently they  have  not  pronounced  the  blessing  yet.  They 
say  Akulina  did  not  even  howl. 

EiRST  Girl.  Mamma  said  that  she  was  marrying  against 
her  will.  Her  stepfather  threatened  her,  or  else  she 
would  never  have  married.  They  have  been  saying  some 
dreadful  things  about  her  ! 

Scene  II.     The  same  and  Marina  (catcJdng  up  with  the 

girls). 

Marina.     Good  day,  girls  ! 

The  Girls.     Good  day,  aunty  ! 

Marina.     Are  you  going  to  the  wedding,  my  dear  ones  ? 

EiRST  Girl.    That  is  over.    We  just  came  to  take  a  look. 

Marina.  Call  my  old  man,  Sem^n  of  Zuev.  You 
know  him,  perhaps  ? 

EiRST  Girl.  Why  not  ?  I  think  he  is  the  bride- 
groom's relative. 

Marina.  Yes.  The  bridegroom  is  my  husband's 
nephew. 

Second  Girl.  Why  don't  you  go  there  yourself  ?  You 
have  come  to  the  wedding,  then  why  don't  you  go  ? 

Marina.  I  don't  feel  like  it,  girl,  and  I  have  no  time. 
We  must  leave.  We  did  not  start  out  for  the  wedding. 
We  were  going  to  town  with  oats.  We  stopped  to  feed 
the  horses,  and  they  called  in  my  old  man. 

EiRST  Girl.     Where  did  you  stop  ?     At  E^dorych's  ? 

Marina.  Yes.  So  I  will  wait  here,  while  you,  dear 
one,  call  my  old  man.  Call  him,  my  dear  !  Say  :  "  Your 
wife,  Marina,  tells  you  to  start.  Your  companions  are 
hitching  up  the  horses  ! " 


170  THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS 

First  Gikl.  All  right,  since  you  will  not  go  yourself. 
{Tlie  girls  walk  along  the  path  to  the  yard.  Songs  and 
tambourines  are  heard.) 

Scene  III.     Marina  {alone). 

Marina  {in  thoiujlit).  I  don't  like  to  go  there,  because 
I  have  not  seen  him  since  he  gave  me  up.  It  is  nearly 
two  years  now.  I  should  like  to  take  a  peep  at  him  and 
Anisya,  to  see  how  they  are  getting  aloug.  People  say 
they  do  not  live  in  peace.  She  is  a  coarse,  headstrong 
woman.  He  has,  no  doubt,  thought  of  me  more  than 
once.  He  wanted  to  have  an  easy  life,  so  he  took  her  in 
my  stead.  God  be  with  him,  I  wish  him  no  evil.  Then 
it  hurt  me.  Yes,  it  pained  me  then.  But  now  I  am 
over  it,  and  have  forgotten  it.  But  I  should  like  to  see 
him  —  {Looking  toward  the  yard  and  seeing  Nikita.)  I 
declare !  What  is  he  coming  for  ?  Have  the  girls  told 
him  ?     Why  has  he  left  the  guests  ?     I  will  go  away. 

Scene  IV.     Marina  and  Nikita  {who  walks  at  first  with 
drooping  head,  and  swinging  his  arms.     Mumhling). 

Marina.     How  gloomy  he  looks  ! 

Nikita  {sees  Marina  and  recognizes  her).  Marina ! 
Dear  friend !     Marina  !     What  are  you  doing  here  ? 

Marina.     I  came  to  get  my  old  man. 

Nikita.  Why  did  you  not  come  to  the  wedding  ? 
You  might  have  looked  at  me,  and  laughed  at  me. 

Marina.  Why  should  I  laugh  at  you  ?  I  came  to 
get  my  husband. 

Nikita.     Oh,  Marina  !     ( Wants  to  embrace  her.) 

Marina  {ang7'ily  turns  away).  Nikita,  leave  your  old 
tricks  !  What  has  been,  is  no  more.  I  came  to  get  my 
husband.     Is  he  in  your  house  ? 

Nikita.     So  you  will  not  let  me  recall  the  past  ? 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  171 

Marina.  There  is  no  reason  for  recalling  the  past. 
What  has  been  is  no  more. 

ISTiKixA.     And  it  will  not  return  ? 

Marina.  No,  it  will  not.  But  why  did  you  go  away  ? 
You  are  the  host,  and  you  have  left  the  wedding-feast. 

NlKiTA  {sitting  doiun  on  the  straw).  Why  have  I  come 
away  ?  Ah,  if  you  only  knew !  I  feel  badly,  Marina,  I 
feel  so  badly  that  I  wish  my  eyes  did  not  see  it  all.  I  left 
the  table  and  went  away  from  the  people,  just  not  to  look 
at  them. 

Marina  (coming  nearer  to  him).     What  is  it  ? 

NiKiTA.  It  is  something  that  neither  my  eating,  nor 
my  drinking,  nor  my  sleep  will  make  me  forget.  Oh,  I 
feel  so  mean,  so  mean !  But  the  worst  thing  about  it  is, 
Marina,  that  I  have  no  one  to  share  my  sorrow  with. 

Marina.  You  can't  live  without  sorrow,  Nikita.  I, 
too,  have  wept  much,  but  it  has  all  passed. 

Nikita.  You  are  speaking  of  what  has  been.  Oh,  my 
friend !     You  got  through  weeping,  but  I  am  all  undone. 

Marina.     What  is  the  matter  ? 

Nikita.  I  am  tired  of  life.  I  am  tired  of  myself. 
Oh,  Marina,  you  did  not  know  how  to  keep  me,  and  you 
have  ruined  me  and  yourself,  too.  What  kind  of  a  life  is 
this? 

Marina  (standing  near  the  barn,  iveeping,  and  holding 
herself  back).  Nikita,  I  do  not  complain  of  my  own  life. 
May  God  grant  that  everybody  lead  such  a  life !  I  con- 
fessed to  my  old  man,  and  he  forgave  me  everything. 
He  does  not  reproach  me  for  it.  I  cannot  complain  about 
my  life.  The  old  man  is  peaceable.  He  is  good  to  me, 
and  I  dress  and  wash  his  children !  He  takes  good  care 
of  me,  so  why  should  I  complain  ?  It  evidently  was 
God's  fate.     And  how  is  your  life  ?     You  are  wealthy  — 

Nikita.  My  life !  I  just  did  not  want  to  disturb  the 
wedding,  or  I  would  have  taken  a  rope,  —  this  rope  (picTcs 
up  the  rope  from  the  straw),  —  and  would  have  thrown  it 


172  THE    POWEE    OF    DARKNESS 

across  this  beam.  Then  I  would  have  made  a  good  noose, 
would  have  climbed  on  the  beam,  and  would  have  put 
my  head  into  it.     That  is  the  life  I  lead. 

Marina.     Stop  talking  that  way  !     Christ  protect  you  ! 

NiKiTA.  You  think  I  am  jesting  ?  Do  you  think  I 
am  drunk  ?  No,  I  am  not.  I  can't  get  drunk  to-day. 
Pining,  pining  is  eating  me  up  !  I  am  completely  undone, 
and  nothing  gives  me  pleasure.  Oh,  Marina,  what  a  time 
we  passed  together,  shortening  the  nights  on  the  rail- 
road ! 

Marixa.  Nikita,  don't  tear  open  old  sores  I  I  have 
accepted  the  Law,  and  you  have,  too.  Don't  stir  up  the 
past ! 

Nikita.  What  shall  I  do  with  my  heart  ?  Where 
shall  I  go  ? 

Marina.  What  shall  you  do  ?  You  have  a  wife  of 
your  own  :  don't  covet  other  women,  but  take  care  of  your 
own  !     You  loved  Anisya  before,  —  love  her  now  ! 

Nikita.  Oh,  this  Anisya  is  as  bitter  as  wormwood  to 
me,  and  she  has  enmeshed  my  feet  like  bad  weeds. 

Marina.  Still,  she  is  your  wife  —  What  is  the  use  of 
talking  ?  Go  to  your  guests,  and  send  my  husband  to 
me  ! 

Nikita.  Oh,  if  you  knew  everything !  What  is  the 
use  of  mentioning  it  ? 

Scene  V.     Nikita,  Marina,  her  husband,  and  Anyiitka- 

Marina's  Husband  {coming  from  the  yard,  red  in  Ms 
face  and  di'unh).  Marina  !  Wife  !  Old  woman  !  Are 
you  here  ? 

Nikita.  Here  is  your  husband.  He  is  calling  you. 
Go! 

Marina.     And  what  will  you  do  ? 

Nikita.  I  ?  I  will  lie  down  here.  {Lies  down  in  the 
straw.) 


THE    POWER   OF    DAEKNESS  173 

Marina's  Husband.     Where  is  she  ? 

Anyutka.     There  she  is,  grandfather,  near  the  barn. 

Marina's  Husband.  What  are  you  standing  there 
for  ?  Go  to  the  wedding !  The  hosts  ask  you  to  come 
and  honour  them.  The  wedding  will  soon  be  over,  and 
then  we  will  go. 

Marina  {^walking  tovjcird  her  Imisbaiul).  I  did  not  feel 
like  it. 

Marina's  Husband.  Go,  I  say !  We  will  drink  a 
glass,  and  you  will  congratulate  rogue  Petrunka.  The 
hosts  will  feel  offended  if  you  don't,  and  we  shall  have 
plenty  of  time  to  attend  to  our  business.  {Marinas  hus- 
band embraces  her  and,  tottering,  goes  away  with  her.) 

Scene  VI.     Nikita  and  Anyutka. 

NiKiTA  {gets  up  and  sits  doum  on  the  straw).  I  feel 
even  worse  since  I  saw  her.  What  a  life  it  was  I  led 
with  her  !  And  now  I  am  lost,  I  am  ruined !  {Lies 
down.)  Whither  shall  I  go  ?  Oh,  mother  earth,  cleave 
open  for  me ! 

Anyutka  {seeing  Nikita  and  running  up  to  him). 
Father,  0  father !  They  are  looking  for  you.  The  spon- 
sor and  everybody  else  have  blessed  them  already,  and 
they  are  angry. 

Nikita  {aside).     Where  shall  I  go  ? 

Anyutka.     What  is  it  ?     What  are  you  saying  ? 

Nikita.     Nothing.     Don't  bother  me ! 

Anyutka.  Father !  Come  with  me  !  {Nikita  is  silent. 
Anyutka  pulls  him  by  the  hand.)  Father,  go  and  bless 
them  !     Eeally,  they  are  very  angry. 

Nikita  {pulling  away  his  hand).     Leave  me  alone ! 

Anyutka.     Come ! 

Nikita  {threatening  her  with  the  reins).  Go,  I  say ! 
I  will  teach  you ! 

Anyutka,     I  will  send  mamma  to  you.    {Runs  away.) 


174  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

Scene  VII.     Nikita  {alone.     Rising). 

NiKiTA.  How  can  I  go  ?  How  can  I  look  into  their 
faces  ?  How  can  I  look  into  her  eyes  ?  {Again  lies 
down.)  Oh,  if  there  were  a  hole  in  the  ground,  I  would 
go  through  it.  People  would  not  see  me,  and  I  would  not 
see  them.  {Again  gets  up.)  I  will  not  go  —  To  per- 
dition with  them !  I  will  not  go.  {Takes  off  his  boots 
and  picks  up  the  rope ;  makes  a  noose  of  it,  and  puts  it 
around  his  neck.)     That's  what  I  will  do. 

Scene  VIII.  Nikita  and  Matr(5Da.  {Nikita  sees  his 
7nother,  takes  off  the  rope,  and  lies  down  in  the  straw 
again.) 

Mateena  {running  up  out  of  breath).  Nikita,  0 
Nikita  !  I  declare,  he  does  not  answer.  Nikita,  are  you 
drunk  ?  Come,  Nikita,  come  !  The  people  are  waiting 
for  you. 

Nikita.  What  have  you  done  with  me  ?  I  am  no 
longer  a  man. 

Matrena.  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ?  Go,  my 
dear,  and  bless  them  in  all  honour,  as  is  proper  I  The 
people  are  waiting  for  you. 

Nikita.     How  can  I  bless  them  ? 

Mateena.     As  usual.     Don't  you  know  how  ? 

Nikita.  I  know,  I  know.  Whom  shall  I  bless? 
What  have  I  done  with  her  ? 

Mateena.  What  have  you  done  ?  There  you  are 
again  at  it !  Nobody  knows  about  it :  neither  cat  nor  kit 
nor  the  pope  knows  it.  The  girl  is  marrying  of  her  own 
will. 

Nikita.     How  of  her  own  will  ? 

Mateena.  She  is  marrying  through  fear.  Anyway 
she  is  marrying.  What  is  to  be  done  ?  She  ought  to  have 
thought  in  time.     Now  she  can't  refuse.     There  is  no 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  175 

offeuce  to  the  suitors.  They  saw  the  girl  twice  and  they 
get  the  money.     Everything  is  in  tip-top  shape. 

NiKiTA.     And  what  about  the  cellar  ? 

Matkena  (laughing).  The  cellar  ?  In  the  cellar  there 
are  mushrooms,  cabbage,  potatoes,  I  suppose.  What  is 
the  use  of  thinking  of  the  past  ? 

NiKiTA.  I  should  like  not  to  think  of  it,  but  I  can't. 
Every  time  I  think  of  it,  I  hear  it.  Oh,  what  have  you 
done  with  me  ? 

Matrena.     Don't  act  the  fool ! 

'NiKiTA  (lying  doivn, face  doivnward).  Mother!  Don't 
torment  me !     I  am  sick  of  it  all  ! 

Matrena.  But  you  must  go.  The  people  are  talking 
as  it  is,  and  now  the  father  goes  away  and  does  not  dare 
bless  them.  They  will  begin  to  put  things  together. 
They  will  figure  it  all  out.  The  moment  you  are  slow 
they  will  begin  to  guess.  Put  on  a  good  face  and 
they  will  receive  you  with  grace.  Above  everything 
else,  my  son,  don't  be  timid,  or  they  will  make  it  out 
at  once. 

NiKiTA.     Oh,  you  have  entangled  me  ! 

Matrena.  Stop  that !  Come  with  me !  Go  and 
bless  them !  Do  everything  in  proper  shape,  and  that 
will  be  the  end  of  it. 

NiKiTA  (still  lying  face  doivnward).     I  cannot. 

Matrena  (aside).  What  has  happened  ?  Everything 
was  going  well,  and  suddenly  this  has  come  over  him.  He 
must  be  bewitched.  Nikita,  get  up !  See,  Anisya  has 
left  the  guests  and  is  coming  this  way 

Scene  IX.     Nikita,  Matrena,  and  Anisya. 

Anisya  (dressed  up,  red  in  her  face,  binder  the  influence 
of  liqiior).  Everything  is  going  so  well,  mother !  So 
well  and  honourably  !  And  how  satisfied  the  people  are  ' 
—  where  is  he  ? 


176  THE    POWER   OP   DAEKNESS 

Matrena.  Here  he  is,  my  dear,  here.  He  is  lying  in 
the  straw  and  won't  get  up. 

NiKiTA  {looking  at  his  wife).  I  declare,  she  is  drunk, 
too.  It  sickens  me  to  look  at  her.  How  can  I  live  with 
her?  {Turns  his  face  downivard.)  I  will  kill  her  some 
day.     It  will  only  be  worse. 

Anisya.  So  you  have  liidden  yourself  in  the  straw ! 
Has  the  hquor  knocked  you  down  ?  {Laughing.)  I  should 
like  to  lie  down  with  you  myself,  but  I  have  no  time. 
Come,  I  will  lead  you  in.  Oh,  how  nice  everything  is  in 
the  house !  It  makes  one  feel  good  to  look  at  it.  There 
is  an  accordion !  The  women  are  singing  so  nicely. 
They  are  all  drunk,  as  is  proper.      It  is  so  nice ! 

NiKiTA.     What  is  nice  ? 

Anisya.  The  wedding,  the  merry  wedding.  All  peo- 
ple say  that  it  is  a  rare  wedding.  Everything  is  so  nice 
and  proper.  Come  now  !  We  will  go  together  —  I  have 
had  some  liquor,  but  I  will  manage  to  take  you  there. 
{Takes  him  hy  the  hand?) 

Nikita  {pulling  himself  aioay  in  disgust).  Go  by 
yourself !     I  will  be  there. 

Anisya.  What  are  you  pouting  about?  We  are  rid 
of  all  our  trouble  and  have  made  her  a  bride,  —  so  now 
we  can  live  an  easy  Hfe.  Everything  is  done  so  properly, 
and  according  to  the  Law.  I  can't  tell  you  how  happy 
I  am.  I  feel  as  though  I  were  marrying  you  again. 
And  the  people  are  so  satisfied !  They  are  all  very 
thankful.  And  such  nice  guests.  Ivan  Mos^ich  and  the 
officer,  too.     They  have  honoured  us,  too. 

Nikita.  Very  well,  stay  with  them  !  What  did  you 
come  here  for  ? 

Anisya.  You  must  come !  How  will  it  look  for  the 
hosts  to  run  away  from  the  guests  ?  And  they  are  such 
nice  guests  ! 

Nikita  {getting  up  and  picking  off  the  straw).  Go  !  I 
"will  be  there  in  a  minute. 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  177 

Matrena.  The  cuckoo  of  the  night  has  cuckooed  better 
than  the  cuckoo  of  the  day.  He  did  not  listen  to  me,  but 
he  obeys  his  wife.      {]\Iatrena  and  Anisya  walk  away.) 

Matrena.     Are  you  coming  ? 

NiKiTA.  I  will  be  there  right  away.  You  go,  and  I 
will  follow  you.  I  will  come  to  bless  them  —  {The 
women  stop.)  Go,  and  I  will  follow  you.  Go,  I  say  ! 
{The  women  exeunt.) 

NiKiTA  {looking  in  their  direction,  in  thought). 

Scene  X.     Nikita  {alone),  then  Mitrich. 

NiKiTA  {sits  down  and  takes  off  his  coat).  Wait  until  I 
come !  You  look  for  me  on  the  beam  !  I  will  straighten 
the  noose  and  jump  from  the  beam,  and  then  you  may 
look  for  me.  The  reins  are  here,  that  is  good.  {In 
thought.)  If  it  were  any  kind  of  a  sorrow,  it  would  pass 
in  time ;  but  this  is  in  the  heart,  and  it  cannot  be  taken 
out.  {Looking  at  the  yard.)  She  is  coming  again,  I  think. 
{Mocking  Anisya.)  "  Oh,  how  nice  it  is  !  I  will  lie  down 
with  you  !  "  Oh,  you  contemptible  witch  !  Embrace  me 
when  they  take  me  off  from  the  beam.  There  will  be  an 
end  of  it.     {Takes  the  rope  and  pulls  it.) 

Mitrich  {drunk.     Pulls  the  rope  hack  and  gets  up).     I 

won't  let  you.     I  won't   let  anybody.     I  will  bring  it 

■  myself.     I  told  you :    I   will    bring    the    straw  myself. 

Nikita,  is  it  you  ?     {Laughing.)     Oh,  the  devil !      Did 

you  come  for  the  straw  ? 

Nikita.     Let  me  have  the  rope ! 

Mitrich.  No,  wait !  The  peasants  sent  me  for  it.  I 
will  bring  it.  {Pases  to  his  feet  and  begins  to  scrape  up 
some  straw  ;  hut  he  totters,  and  finally  falls  down.)  The 
liquor  is  stronger :  it  has  me  down. 

Nikita.     Let  me  have  the  reins  ! 

Mitrich.  I  told  you  I  wouldn't.  Nikita,  you  are 
a  stupid  !     {Laughing.)     I  love  you,  but  you  are  a  stupid. 


178  TUE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

You  see  I  am  druuk.     The  devil  I  care  for  you  !     You 
think  that  I  need  you  —     Look  at  me  !     I  am  an  under- 
officer !     You  are  a  stupid,  and  you  can't  even  pronounce 
it:   Under-officer  of  the  very  first  regiment  of  her  Maj- 
esty's Grenadiers.     I  have  served  my  Tsar  and  my  coun- 
try faithfully  and  honestly.     What  am  I  ?     You  think  I 
am  a  soldier  ?     No,  I  am  not  a  soldier,  but  the  very  worst 
kind  of  a  man,  —  an  erring  orphan.    I  swore  off  drinking, 
and  see  how  I  am  swilling !     Well,  do  you  think  I  am 
afraid  of  you  ?    I  guess  not.     I  am  not  afraid  of  anybody. 
When  I  drink,  I  drink ! .    I'll  be  on  a  tear  for  two  weeks 
now,  —  I'll  paint  things  red  !     I  will  spend  everything  I 
have  on  me  for  drinks :    I  will  sell  my  cap,  pawn  my 
passport,  —  and  I  am  not  afraid  of  a  soul !     They  used  to 
flog  me  in  the  army  to  make  me  stop  drinking.     They 
walloped  me:    "  W^ell,"  they   said,  "will  you   stop  it?" 
"  No,"  said  I.     I  was   not  afraid   of  them,  —  that's  the 
kind  of  a  man  I  am !     I  am  on  the  rampage  now,  and  I 
will  drink  !     I  am  not  afraid  of  anybody.     I  am  telling 
you  the  truth  —     Why  should  I  be  afraid  of  them,  darn 
it !     That's  what !     There  was  a  pope  who  used  to  tell 
me  that  the  devil  is  a  braggart,  —  the  moment  you  begin 
to  brag,  you  lose  your  courage.     And  the   moment  you 
lose  your  courage  before  people,  the  devil  grabs  you  and 
jams  you  where  he  has  a  mind  to.    As  I  am  not  afraid  of 
people,  I  live  an  easy  life.     I'll  spit  into  his  beard,  with ' 
his   claws,  —  and  on  the   mother  of  his  brood  ■  of  pigs ! 
Here,  chaw  at  it ! 

NiKiTA  {crossing  Jmnself).  How  foolish  it  was  of  me ! 
{Throwing  away  the  rope.) 

MiTRiCH.     What  ? 

NiKiTA  {rising).  You  say  I  ought  not  to  be  afraid  of 
people  ? 

MiTRiCH.  What  is  there  to  be  afraid  of,  darn  it !  Look 
at  them  in  the  bath-house !  They  are  all  made  of  the 
same  dough.      One  has  a  bigger  belly  than  another  — 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  179 

that  is  all  the  difference  between  them.     So,  whom  are 
you  to  be  afraid  of  ?     Pea-pie  choke  them  ! 

Scene  XI.    Nikita,  Mitrich,  and  Matr^na  {coming  out  of 

the  yard). 

Matrena  {calling).     Well,  are  you  coming  ? 
NiKiTA.     Oh !     Yes,   it   is    better   this    way !     I   am 
coming  !     {Goes  toward  the  yard.) 

Curtain. 

Part   II. 

Change  of  scenery.  Tlie  room,  as  in  the  First  Act,  is  full 
of  people,  sitting  at  tables,  and  standing.  In  the  fore 
corner,  Akulina  and  her  husband.  On  a  table  are 
images  and  bread.  Among  the  guests  are  Marina, 
her  husband,  and  the  officer.  Women  sing  songs; 
Anisya  serves  the  liquor.     The  songs  stop. 

Scene  I.  Anisya,  Marina,  Marina's  Husband,  Akulina, 
her  Bridegroom,  Driver,  Officer,  Bridegroom's  Mother, 
Best  Man,  Matr^na,  Guests,  and  people. 

Driver.     It  is  time  to  start,  —  the  church  is  far  ofif. 

Best  Man.  Just  let  the  stepfather  bless  them.  Where 
is  he  ? 

Anisya.  He  will  be  here  in  a  minute,  my  dear,  he 
will.     Take  another  glass,  —  don't  refuse  me  ! 

Bridegroom's  Mother.  What  keeps  him  away  ?  We 
have  been  waiting  so  long. 

Anisya.  He  will  come,  —  in  a  minute.  He  will  be 
here  before  a  clean-shaven  girl  will  have  plaited  her 
braids.  Take  another  glass,  my  dear  guests !  {Serves 
them.)  He  will  be  here  at  once.  Pretty  girls,  sing  another 
song  in  the  meantime  ! 


180  THE    POWER   OF    DARKNESS 

Driver.  They  have  sung  all  the  songs  waiting  for 
him.  {The  women  sing.  During  the  song  enter  Nikita 
and  Akim.) 

Scene  II.    The  same,  Nikita,  and  Akim. 

Nikita  (holding  Akim  hy  his  hand  and  pushing  him 
lefore  himself).     Go,  father !     I  can't  do  it  without  you. 

Akim.     I  don't  like  it,  so  to  speak  — 

Nikita  {to  the  ivomen).  Stop  your  singing  !  {Survey- 
ing everyhody  in  the  room.)     Marina,  are  you  here  ? 

Bridegroom's  Mother.  Take  the  image  and  bless 
them  ! 

Nikita.  Wait,  give  me  a  chance !  {Looking  around 
him.)     Akulina,  are  you  here  ? 

Bridegroom's  Mother.  Why  are  you  calling  up  all 
the  people?  Where  else  is  she  to  be?  How  strange 
he  is  — 

Anisya.     0  Lord  !     He  is  undressed. 

Nikita.  Father,  are  you  here  ?  Look  at  me  !  Ortho- 
dox people,  you  are  all  here,  and  so  am  I !  Here  I  am ! 
{Kneeling  dovm.) 

Anisya.  Nikita,  what  is  the  matter  with  you?  Oh, 
my  head ! 

Bridegroom's  Mother.     Well,  I  declare ! 

Matrena.  I  say  he  has  drunk  too  much  French  wine. 
Come  to  your  senses  !  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? 
(People  try  to  lift  him,  but  he  pays  no  attention  to  anybody, 
and  keeps  looking  in  front  of  him.) 

Nikita.  Orthodox  people !  I  am  guilty,  and  I  want 
to  make  my  confession. 

Matrena  (pulling  him  by  the  shoulder).  What  is  the 
matter  with  you  ?  Are  you  insane  ?  Dear  people,  he  is 
out  of  his  mind,  —  we  ought  to  take  him  away. 

Nikita  (brushing  her  aside  with  his  shoulder).  Leave 
me  alone !     Father,  listen  to  me !     First  of  all,  Marina, 


THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS  181 

look  toward  me !  (^Bowing  to  her  and  getting  up.)  I  am 
guilty  toward  you  :  I  had  promised  to  marry  you,  aud  I 
seduced  you.  I  deceived  you  and  abandoned  you,  —  for- 
give me  for  Christ's  sake !  {Again  hows  to  her  to  the 
ground.) 

Anisya.  Wliat  are  you  raving  about  ?  How  indecent ! 
Nobody  is  asking  you  about  it.  Get  up  and  stop  dis- 
gracing yourself  ! 

Matkena.  Oh,  oh,  he  is  bewitched.  What  is  the 
matter  with  him  ?  He  has  the  evil  eye  upon  him.  Get 
up  and  stop  talking  nonsense  !     (Pulls  him.) 

NiKiTA  (shaking  his  head).  Don't  touch  me  !  Forgive 
me,  Marina !  I  have  sinned  toward  you.  Forgive  me,  for 
Christ's  sake  !  (Marina  covers  her  face  with  her  hands 
and  keeps  silent.) 

Anisya.  Get  up,  I  say,  and  stop  disgracing  yourself  I 
Don't  recall  the  past !  Don't  act  like  that !  Shame  on 
you  !     Oh,  my  head  !     He  must  be  insane. 

NlKiTA  (piLshing  avjay  his  vjife  and  turning  to  Aku- 
lina).  Akuliua,  now  I  have  something  to  say  to  you. 
Listen,  Orthodox  people !  I  am  a  wretched  sinner. 
Akulina,  I  am  guilty  toward  you  !  Your  father  did  not 
die  a  natural  death.     He  was  poisoned. 

Anisya  (shouting).  My  head !  What  is  he  talking 
about  ? 

Matrena.  He  is  beside  himself.  Take  him  away ' 
(People  walk  up  toward  him,  ivishing  to  take  him  away.) 

Akim  (warding  them  off).  Wait !  Good  men,  wait,  so 
to  speak ! 

NiKiTA.  Akulina,  I  poisoned  him.  Forgive  me,  for 
Christ's  sake ! 

Akulina  (jumping  up).  He  is  lying.  I  know  who 
has  poisoned  him. 

Bridegroom's  Mother.     Stop  !     Sit  down  ! 

Akim.     0  Lord  !    The  sin,  the  sin  ! 

Officer.     Take   him !    Send   for   the   elder   and   the 


182  THE    POWER    OF    DARKNESS 

posse !  I  must  write  up  a  protocol.  Get  up  and  come 
over  here ! 

Akim  {to  the  officer).  You,  bright-buttons,  so  to  speak, 
wait  awhile,  so  to  speak  !  Give  him  a  chance,  so  to 
speak,  to  tell  everything  ! 

Officer  {to  Alim).  You,  old  man,  look  out,  and  don't 
interfere !      I  must  write  up  a  protocol. 

Akim.  What  a  queer  fellow,  so  to  speak,  you  are ! 
Wait,  I  say !  Don't  talk  now  about  the  protocol !  God's 
business,  so  to  speak,  is  being  done  here  —  a  man  is  mak- 
ing his  confession,  so  to  speak,  and  he  talks  about  the 
protocol,  so  to  speak  — 

Officer.     Send  for  the  elder  ! 

Akim.  Let  him  first  attend  to  God's  business,  so  to 
speak,  and  then  you  may  attend  to  yours,  so  to  speak ! 

NiKiTA.  Akulina,  there  is  another  sin  I  have  com- 
mitted toward  you.  I  have  seduced  you,  —  forgive  me, 
for  Christ's  sake  !     {Bows  to  the  ground  before  her.) 

Akulina  {coiyimg  out  from  behind  the  table).  Let  me 
go,  —  I  will  not  be  married  !  He  compelled  me  to,  — 
but  now  I  won't ! 

Officer.     Eepeat  what  you  have  said  ! 

NiKiTA.     Wait,  Mr.  Officer  !     Let  me  finish  first ! 

Akim  {in  tra7isport).  Speak,  my  child !  Tell  every- 
thing, and  you  will  feel  better  !  Eepent  you  before  God, 
and  don't  be  afraid  of  people !  God  is  the  main  thing, 
God! 

Nikita.  I  killed  your  father,  and  I,  dog,  have  ruined 
his  daughter.  I  had  the  power  over  her,  and  I  killed 
also  her  baby. 

Akulina.     That  is  true,  that  is  true  ! 

Nikita.  I  choked  the  baby  to  death  with  a  board.  I 
sat  down  upon  it  —  I  choked  it  —  and  its  bones  crunched. 
{Weejoing.)  Then  I  buried  it  in  the  ground.  I  did  it, 
all  by  myself. 

Akulina.     He  is  lying.     I  told  him  to. 


THE    POWER    OF    DAEKNESS  183 

NiKiTA.  Don't  shield  me  !  I  am  not  afraid  of  any- 
body now !  Forgive  me,  Orthodox  people !  {Bows  to  the 
ground.) 

{Silence.) 

Officek.  Bind  him !  Your  wedding  is  evidently 
broken  up.     {People  come  wp  with  their  belts.) 

NiKiTA.  Wait  awhile,  —  you  will  have  time  enough. 
{Bowing  to  the  ground  before  his  father.)  Father  dear ! 
Forgive  me,  sinful  man !  You  told  me,  when  I  first 
started  on  this  life  of  debauch :  "  When  the  claw  is 
caught,  the  whole  bird  is  lost,"  but  I,  dog,  did  not  pay 
any  attention  to  you,  and  so  everything  turned  out  as 
you  said.     Forgive  me,  for  Christ's  sake ! 

Akim  {in  transpo7't).  God  will  forgive  you,  my  own 
child !  {Embraces  him.)  You  did  not  pity  yourself,  but 
He  will.     God  is  the  main  thing,  God ! 

Scene  III.     The  same  and  the  Elder. 

Elder  {enter).     We  have  a  posse  here. 

Officer.  We  will  hold  the  inquest  at  once.  {Nihita  is 
being  bound.) 

Akulina  {walking  up  and  standing  near  him.)  I  will 
tell  the  truth !     Ask  me,  too  ! 

NmixA  (bound).  There  is  nothing  to  ask.  I  have 
done  it  all  myself.  It  was  my  plan,  and  my  deed.  Lead 
me  where  I  belong  !     I  sha'n't  say  another  word ! 

Curtain. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHT- 
ENMENT 

Comedy  in  Four  Acts 

1889 


DEAMATIS  PERSONS 

Leonid  Fedorovich  Zvyezdintsev,  an  ex-lieutenant  of 
the  Horse-Guards,  owner  of  twenty-four  thousand 
desyatinas  in  various  Governments.  A  well-pre- 
served man,  about  sixty  years  of  age,  —  a  meek, 
pleasant  gentleman.  Beheves  in  spiritualism  and 
likes  to  amuse  others  with  his  stories. 

Anna  Pavlovxa  Zvyezdintsev,  his  wife,  a  plump  woman 
who  is  trying  to  appear  young.  Worrying  about 
worldly  proprieties,  despising  her  husband,  and 
blindly  trusting  her  doctor.     An  irritable  lady. 

Betsy,  their  daughter,  a  worldly  girl,  about  twenty 
years  of  age,  with  loose  manners,  imitating  men,  in 
eye-glasses.  A  coquette  and  a  giggler.  Speaks  very 
rapidly  and  very  distinctly,  compressing  her  lips, 
like  a  foreigner. 

Vasili  Leonidych,  their  son,  twenty-five  years  old,  a 
bachelor  of  law,  without  any  special  occupation, 
a  member  of  a  bicycle,  a  racing,  and  a  kennel  club. 
A  young  man  enjoying  excellent  health  and  imper- 
turbable self-confidence.  Speaks  aloud  and  by  jerks. 
He  is  either  entirely  in  earnest,  almost  gloomy,  or 
noisily  vivacious,  and  laughs  loud. 

Professor  Aleksyey  Vladimirovich  Krugosvyetlov,  a 
savant,  about  fifty  years  of  age,  with  quiet,  pleasantly 
self-confident  manners  and  a  similarly  hesitating  and 
chanting  speech.  Likes  to  talk.  He  treats  with 
gentle  contempt  those  who  do  not  agree  with  him. 

Smokes  much.     A  lean,  mobile  man. 

187 


188     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Doctor,  about  forty,  a  healthy,  stout,  red-faced  man. 
Loud  and  coarse.  All  the  time  smiles  with  self- 
satisfaction. 

Marya  Konstantinovna,  a  maiden  of  about  twenty,  a 
graduate  of  a  conservatory,  teacher  of  music,  with 
tufts  of  hair  over  her  brow,  in  an  exaggeratedly 
fashionable  attire,  flattering  and  easily  confused. 

Petrishchev,  about  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  bachelor 
of  philology,  in  search  of  an  activity,  member  of 
the  same  societies  as  Vasili  Leouidych,  and,  in  addi- 
tion, of  the  society  for  promoting  chintz  and  calico 
evening  parties.  Bald,  quick  in  his  movements  and 
speech,  and  extremely  poHte. 

Baroness,  a  distinguished  lady  about  fifty,  indolent, 
speaks  without  intonations. 

Princess,  a  lady  of  the  world,  guest. 

Young  Princess,  a  young  lady  of  the  world,  finical,  guest. 

Countess,  an  ancient  lady,  barely  moving  about,  with 
false  hair  and  teeth. 

Grossmann,  dark-complexioned,  of  a  Jewish  type,  very 
mobile,  nervous,  speaks  very  loud. 

Marya  Vasilevna  Tolbukhin,  a  very  stout  lady,  very 
dignified,  rich,  and  good-natured  ;  acquainted  with  all 
remarkable  people,  past  and  present.  Speaks  very 
fast,  trying  to  outtalk  everybody  else.     Smokes. 

Baron  Klincen  (Coco),  a  graduate  of  the  St.  Petersburg 
University,  a  yunkei  of  the  chamber,  serving  with 
an  embassy.  Very  correct,  and  therefore  composed 
and  calmly  gay. 

A  Lady. 

A  Gentleman  {ivitliout  words). 

Sergyey  Ivanovich  Sakhatov,  about  fifty  years  old,  ex- 
associate  minister,  an  elegant  gentleman,  of  broad 
European  culture ;  has  no  special  occupation,  but  is 
interested  in  everything.  Holds  himself  with  dignity 
and  even  somewhat  severely. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  189 

Fedor  Iyanych,  valet,  about  sixty  years  old,  an  edu- 
cated mau,  foud  of  culture.  Misuses  his  eye-glasses 
and  handkerchief,  which  he  unfolds  slowly.  Inter- 
ested in  pohtics.     An  intelligent  and  kind  man. 

Gkigoki,  lackey,  twenty-eight  years  old,  fine-looking,  dis- 
sipated, envious,  and  bold. 

Yakov,  butler,  about  forty,  zealous,  good-natured,  living 
only  for  liis  family  interests  in  the  village. 

Semen,  peasant  of  the  pantry,  about  twenty  years  old, 
a  healthy,  fresh  country  lad,  blond,  without  a  beard, 
quiet,  smiling. 

Coachman,  thirty-five  years  old,  a  fop,  wearing  mous- 
tache only,  coarse  and  determined. 

Old  Cook,  forty -five  years  old,  shaggy,  unshaven,  bloated, 
yellow,  trembling,  in  a  torn  nankeen  summer  over- 
coat, dirty  trousers,  and  torn  boots  ;  speaks  hoarsely  ; 
the  words  escape  from  him  as  though  over  au  im- 
pediment. 

Woman  Cook,  great  talker,  dissatisfied,  about  thirty  years 
old. 

Porter,  ex-soldier. 

Tanya,  chambermaid,  about  nineteen  years  old,  energetic, 
strong,  merry,  and  quickly  passing  from  one  mood  to 
another.  Squeaks  in  moments  of  strong  excitement 
from  joy. 

First  Peasant,  about  sixty  years  old  ;  has  been  an  elder, 
thinks  that  he  knows  how  to  treat  gentlemen,  and 
hkes  to  hear  himself  talk. 

Second  Peasant,  about  forty-five  years  old,  rude  and 
truthful ;  does  not  like  to  say  more  than  is  necessary. 
Semen's  father. 

Third  Peasant,  about  seventy  years  old,  in  bast  shoes, 
nervous,  restless,  in  haste ;  easily  embarrassed,  and 
covering  up  his  embarrassment  by  talking. 

First  Footman  of  the  countess,  an  old-fashioned  old  mar., 
with  a  lackey's  pride. 


190     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Second  Footman,  huge,  robust,  rude. 
Shop  Messenger,  iu  a  blue  sleeveless  coat,  with  a  fresh 
ruddy  face.    Speaks  firmly,  impressively,  and  clearly. 

Action  takes  place  in  the  capital,  in  Zvyezdintsev's 
house. 


THE     FRUITS     OF     ENLIGHT- 
ENMENT 


ACT   I. 


The  stage  represents  the  antechamber  of  a  rich  house  in 
Moscoiv.  TJiree  doors  :  the  outer,  into  Leonid  Fedoro- 
vich's  private  cabin,  and  into  Vasili  Zeonidych's 
room.  A  staircase  leading  to  the  upper  rooms  ;  back 
of  it,  a  passage  to  the  butler's  pantry. 

Scene  I.     Grigori  (a  young,  handsome  lackey,  looking  in 
the  mirror  and  primping  himself). 

Grigori.  I  am  sony  for  my  moustache.  She  says  a 
moustache  is  not  good  for  a  lackey.  Why  ?  That  you  may 
see  that  I  am  a  lackey,  or  else  I  might  look  finer  than  her 
darling  son.  Who  is  he,  anyway  ?  Even  though  I  am 
without  a  moustache,  he  can't  come  up  to  me  —  {Look- 
ing in  the  mirror,  smiling.)  What  a  lot  of  women  are 
after  me !  But  I  do  not  like  any  of  them  as  much  as 
Tanya  —  A  simple  chambermaid,  yes,  but  she  is  finer 
than  any  lady  !  {Smiling.)  And  so  sweet !  {Listening.) 
There   she   is  herself  !     {Smiling.)     Just  hear  her  strike 

the  floor  with  her  heels  !     Whew  ! 

191 


192     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  IL     Grigori  and  Tanya  {in  fur  coat  and  half- 
shoes). 

Grigori.     My  respect  to  Tatyana  Makarovna  ! 

Tanya.  What,  are  you  looking  at  yourself  ?  You 
imagine  you  are  very  good-looking  ! 

Grigori.     Why,  am  I  not  ? 

Tanya.  Neither  good,  nor  bad-looking,  just  half  and 
half.     What  are  the  furs  doing  here  ? 

Grigori.  I  shall  take  them  away  at  once,  madam. 
{Takes  down  a  fur  coat  and  covers  Tanya  with  it,  embrac- 
ing her.)     Tanya,  let  me  tell  you  — 

Tanya.  Go  to  !  What  does  this  look  like  ?  {Angrily 
tearing  herself  away.)     I  tell  you,  leave  me  alone  ! 

Grigori  {looking  around).     Kiss  me  ! 

Tanya.  What  makes  you  bother  me  so  much  ?  I  will 
give  you  a  kiss  !  —     {Raises  her  hand  to  strike  him.) 

Vasili  Leonidych  {hehind  the  stage  a  hell  is  rung,  and 
then  a  voice  is  heard).     Grigori ! 

Tanya.     Go  !     Vasili  Leonidych  is  calling  you. 

Grigori.  He  will  wait:  he  has  just  opened  his  eyes. 
Tell  me,  why  do  you  not  love  me  ? 

Tanya.  Don't  talk  about  any  of  your  loves !  I  do 
not  love  anybody. 

Grigori.  It  is  not  so.  You  love  Sem(5u.  A  tine 
fellow  to  love  !     A  black-handed  peasant  of  the  pantry ! 

Tanya.  Let  him  be  what  he  may,  —  but  you  are  en- 
vious. 

Vasili    Leonidych  {hehind  the  scene).     Grigori ! 

Grigori.  Wait !  —  What  have  I  to  be  envious  of  ? 
You  have  just  begun  your  education,  and  see  with  whom 
you  are  keeping  company !  It  would  be  different  if  you 
loved  me  —  Tanya  — 

Tanya  {angrily  and  sternly).  I  tell  you,  you  must  not 
expect  a  thing. 

VAsiLi    Leonidych  {hehind  the  scene).     Grigori ! 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     193 

Grigori.     You  are  dreadfully  strict. 

Vasili  Leonidych  (behind  the  scene,  cries  stubbornly, 
evenly,  and  at  the  top  of  his  voice).  Grigori !  Grigori ! 
Grigori!     {Tanya  and  Grigori  laugh.) 

Grigori.  You  ought  to  see  the  women  that  have  been 
loving  me !     {Bell.) 

Tanya.     Go  to  the  master,  and  leave  me  alone ! 

Grigori.  You  are  foolish,  when  you  come  to  think  of 
it.     I  am  not  Semen  ! 

Tanya.  Sem^n  wants  to  marry,  and  does  not  think  of 
foolishness  — 


Scene    III.     Grigdri,  Tanya,  and  Messenger  {carrying  a 
large  paper  box  with  a  dress). 

Messenger.     Good  morning  to  you  ! 

Grigori.     Good  morninsr.    From  whom  is  it  ? 

Messenger.  From  Bourdier,  with  a  dress.  Here  is  a 
note  to  the  lady. 

Tanya  {taking  the  note).  Sit  down  here !  I  will  take 
it  in.     {Exit.) 


Scene  IV.  Grigori,  Messenger,  and  Vasili  Leonidych 
{jnitting  his  head  out  of  the  door,  in  his  shirt  and 
slippers). 

Vasili  Leonidych.     Grigori ! 
Grigori.     Immediately. 

Vasili   Leonidych.     Grigori,  do  you  not  hear  me  ? 
Grigorl     I  have  just  come  in. 
Vasili   Leonidych.     Hot  water  and  tea  ! 
Grigorl     Sem^n  will  bring  it  in  a  minute. 
Vasili   Leonidych.     What  is  this  ?     From  Bourdier  ? 
Messenger.     Yes,  sir.     (  Vasili  Leonidych  and  Grigori 
exeunt.     Bell.) 


194  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 


Scene    V.     Messenger  and  Tanya  {running  in  to  answer 

the  hell). 

Tanya  {to  the  messenger).     Wait ! 
Messenger.     That's  what  I  have  been  doing. 


Scene    VI.     Messenger,  Tanya,  and  Sakhatov  {ivalks  in 

thi'ough  the  door). 

Tanya.  Pardon  me,  the  lackey  has  just  gone  out. 
But  please,  let  me  help  you  !     {Takes  off  his  fur  coat.) 

Sakhatov  {adjusting  his  clothes).  Is  Leonid  FMorovich 
at  home  ?     Is  he  up  ?     {Bell.) 

Tanya.     Certainly.     Long  ago. 

Scene   VII.     Messenger,  Tanya,  Sakhatov,  a7id  Doctor 

{entering). 

Doctor  {looking  for  the  lackey.  Seeing  Sakhdtov,  with 
familiai'ity).     Ah,  my  respects  to  you  ! 

Sakhatov  {looking  fixedly  at  him).  I  think  you  are 
the  doctor  ? 

Doctor.  I  thought  you  were  abroad.  Coming  to  see 
Leonid  F^dorovich  ? 

Sakhatov.  Yes.  What  are  you  doing  here  ?  Any- 
body ill  ? 

Doctor  {laughing).  Not  exactly  ill,  but,  you  know  — 
these  ladies  are  in  a  bad  shape.  They  play  cards  every 
day  until  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  then  they 
take  to  the  wine-glass.  The  lady  is  stout  and  fat,  and  not 
so  very  young,  either. 

Sakhatov.  Do  you  tell  your  diagnosis  to  Anna  Pav- 
lovna  ?     I  should  think  she  would  not  Hke  it. 

Doctor  {laughing).  But  it  is  the  truth.  They  do  all 
these  things,  and  then  there  is  a  disorder  of  the  digestive 
organs,  pressure  on  the  Hver,  the  nerves,  —  and  all  that 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     195 

rigmarole,  and  I  have  to  mend  them.  Lots  of  trouble 
with  them.  {Laughing.)  Aud  you  ?  You  are  a  spiri- 
tualist yourself,  I  think. 

Sakhatov.  I  ?  Xo,  I  am  not  a  spirituahst  myself  — 
Well,  my  respects  to  you !  ( Wants  to  go,  hut  the  doctor 
stops  him.) 

Doctor.  No,  I  do  not  myself  absolutely  deny,  when 
such  a  man  as  Krugos\'7etlov  takes  part  in  it.  How 
could  I  ?  A  professor,  —  a  European  celebrity  !  There 
must  be  something  in  it»  I  should  like  to  take  a  look  at 
it,  but  I  never  have  any  time,  —  there  is  always  something 
else  to  do. 

Sakhatov.  Yes,  yes.  My  respects  to  you !  ( Walks 
away,  ivith  a  light  boiv.) 

Doctor  (to  Tanya).     Is  she  up  ? 

Tanya.  In  the  chamber.  If  you  please.  (Sakhatov 
and  the  doctor  go  in  different  directions.) 

Scene    VIII.     Messenger,    Tanya,    and    F^dor   Ivanych 
(entering  with  a  newspaper  in  his  hands). 

Fedor  IvAJSfYCH  (to  the  messenger).  What  are  you 
doing  here  ? 

Messenger.  I  am  from  Bourdier,  with  a  dress  and  a 
note.     I  was  told  to  wait. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Ah,  from  Bourdier !  (To  Tanya.) 
Who  has  come  ? 

Tan^ya,  Sergy^y  Ivanych  Sakhatov,  and  the  doctor. 
They  stood  here  awhile  talking  all  about  the  spirituality. 

Fedor   Ivanych  (correcting  her).     About  spiritualism. 

Tanya.  That's  what  I  say,  about  the  spirituahty. 
Did  you  hear,  F^dor  Ivanych,  how  well  it  all  went  last 
time  ?  (Laughing)  There  were  raps,  and  things  flew 
about. 

Fedor   Ivanych.     How  do  you  know  ? 

Tanya.     Lizav^ta  Leonidovna  told  me. 


196     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene    IX.     Tanya,    F^dor    Ivanych,    Messenger,    and 
Yakov,  the  butler  (running  in  with  a  glass  of  tea). 

Yakov  {to  the  messenger).     Good  morning  ! 
Messengee  {sadly).     Good  morning!     {Yakov  raps  at 
Vasili  Lconidych's  door.) 

Scene    X.     The  same  and  Grigori. 

Grigori.     Let  me  have  it ! 

Yakov.  You  have  not  brought  yesterday's  glasses 
back,  and  the  tray  is  still  in  Vasili  Leonidych's  room.  I 
shall  be  responsible  for  it. 

Grigori.     The  tray  is  filled  with  cigars. 

Yakov.  Put  them  elsewhere !  I  shall  have  to  answer 
for  it. 

Grigori.     I  will  bring  it,  I  will. 

Yakov.  You  say  you  will  bring  it,  but  you  don't. 
The  other  day  they  asked  for  it,  and  I  had  nothing  to 
serve  on. 

Grigori.     I  say  I  will  bring  it.     What  zeal ! 

Yakov.  It  is  easy  for  you  to  say  so,  but  this  is  the 
third  time  I  have  to  serve  tea,  and  get  ready  for  break- 
fast. I  am  kept  busy  all  day  long.  Who  in  the  house 
has  more  work  to  do  than  I  ?     And  still  I  am  no  good ! 

Grigori.  What  better  could  there  be  ?  You  are  very 
good ! 

Tanya.  Nobody  is  good  enough  for  you,  but  you  your- 
self. 

Grigori  {to  Tanya).     Nobody  asked  you  !     {Exit.) 

Scene    XL     Tanya,  Yakov,  F^dor  Ivanych,  and   Mes- 
senger. 

Yakov.  No,  I  don't  complain  —  Tatyana  Markovna, 
did  the  lady  not  say  anything  about  yesterday  ? 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  197 

Tai-jya.      About  the  lamp  ? 

Yakov.  God  knows  how  it  escaped  from  my  hands. 
I  just  began  to  wipe  it  off  and  wanted  to  put  my  haud 
around  it,  when  it  jumped  out  and  broke  into  tiny  bits. 
What  a  misfortune !  It  is  easy  enough  for  Grigori  Mi- 
khaylych  to  talk  the  way  he  does,  for  he  is  a  single  man, 
but  I  have  a  family  —  I  have  to  think  about  everything, 
and  feed  them.  Work  does  not  trouble  me —  So  she  did 
not  say  anything  ?  Well,  thank  God  !  —  F^dor  Ivanych, 
have  you  one  spoon  or  two  ? 

Fedor  Ivaxych.  One,  one  !  (^Reading  the  newspaper. 
Ydkov  exit.) 

Scene    XII.      Tauya,    F^dor    Ivauych,    and    Messenger. 
Bell  is  rung.     Enter  Grigori  tvith  tray,  and.  Porter. 

Porter  {to  Grigori).  Announce  to  the  master  that  the 
peasants  from  the  village  are  here ! 

Grigori  [pointing  to  Fedor  Ivanych).  Tell  the  valet ! 
I  have  no  time.     [Exit.) 

Scene  XIII.     Tanya,  F^dor  Ivanych,  Porter,  and  Mes- 
senger. 

Tanya.     Where  are  the  peasants  from  ? 

Porter.     From  the  Government  of  Kursk,  I  think. 

Tanya  (squeaJdng).  It  is  they  —  Semen's  father, — 
about  the  land.  I  will  go  and  meet  them.  [Running 
away.) 

Scene  XIV.     F^dor  Ivanych,  Porter,  and  Messenger. 

Porter.  What  do  you  say  ?  Shall  I  let  them  in  here 
or  what  ?  They  say  they  have  come  in  regard  to  the 
land,  —  the  master  knows. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     Yes,  about  the  purchase  of  the  land. 


198  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Yes,  yes.  He  has  a  guest  just  now.  You  tell  them  to 
wait. 

Porter.     Where  shall  they  wait  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Let  them  wait  in  the  courtyard.  I 
will  send  for  them.     (Forter  exit.) 

Scene    XV.     F^dor   Ivanych,  Tanya,  followed   hi/  three 
peasants,  Grigori,  and  Messenger. 

Tanya,     To  the  right.     This  way,  this  way  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  have  ordered  you  not  to  let 
them  in. 

Grigori.     There  you  have  it,  hussy  ! 

Tanya.  It  will  not  harm,  F^dor  Ivanych  !  They  will 
stand  at  the  very  edge. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     They  will  bring  in  dirt. 

Tanya.  They  have  cleaned  their  shoes,  and  I  will 
clean  up.     ( To  the  peasants.)     You  stand  here  ! 

(^Enter  the  peasants,  carrying  presents  in  hercliiefs :  white 
loaves,  eggs,  towels.  They  are  trying  to  find  something 
to  cross  themselves  by.  Cross  themselves  at  the  staircase, 
bow  to  Fedor  Ivanych,  and  take  a  firm  stand.) 

Grigori  {to  Fedor  Ivanych).  FMor  Ivanych !  They 
say  that  Pirouet's  half-shoes  are  the  latest  fashion,  but 
this  fellow  has  better  ones !  {Fainting  to  the  Third  Feas- 
ant in  bast  shoes.) 

Fedor  Ivanych.  You  must  always  make  fun  of 
people.     {Grigori  exit.) 

Scene   XVI.     Tanya,    F^dor   Ivanych,   Messenger,  and 

three  peasants. 

Fedor  Ivanych  {rising  and  waUcing  over  to  the  peas- 
ants). So  you  are  from  Knrsk,  and  have  come  in  regard 
to  the  purchase  of  the  land  ? 


THE  FEUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     199 

First  Peasant.  Yes,  sir.  It  originates,  you  may  take 
it,  iu  regard  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  land  purchase 
that  we  are  here.     Can't  you  announce  us  ? 

Fedor  Ivaxycit.  Yes,  yes,  I  know,  I  know.  Wait 
here,  I  will  announce  you  at  once.     {Exit.) 

Scene  XVII.  Tanya,  Messenger,  and  three  peasants. 
Vasili  Leouidych  (behind  the  scene).  The  peasants 
look  around,  not  knowing  tvhat  to  do  with  their 
presents. 

First  Peasant.  Where,  then,  so  to  speak,  I  do  not 
know  what  to  call  it,  is  the  thing  to  put  it  on  ?  Let  us 
do  it  according  to  regulations.  Can't  you  let  us  have  a 
dish,  or  something  ? 

Tanya.  Immediately,  immediately.  Let  me  have 
them ;  in  the  meanwhile  I  will  place  them  here.  (Puts 
the  presents  on  a  small  sofa.) 

First  Peasant.  Of  what  standing,  for  example,  is  the 
worthy  one  who  came  up  to  us  ? 

Tanya.     It  is  the  vally. 

First  Peasant.  That's  simple  enough,  —  volly.  This 
means  that  he  is,  so  to  speak,  in  charge  of  things —  (To 
Tanya.)     And  you,  for  example,  are  also  in  the  service  ? 

Tanya,  I  am  a  chambermaid.  I  am  myself  from 
D^men.  I  know  you  and  you,  only  this  uncle  I  do  not 
know.     (Pointing  to  the  Third  Peasant.) 

Third  Peasant.  These  you  have  recognized,  and  can't 
you  recognize  me  ? 

Tanya.     Are  you  Efim  Antonych  ? 

First  Peasant.     In  rivality. 

Tanya.     And  are  you  Semen's  father,  Zakhar  Trifdnych  ? 

Second  Peasant.     Correct ! 

Third  Peasant.  And  I  am,  you  know,  Mitri  Chilikin. 
Do  you  recognize  me  now  ? 

Tanya.     Now  I  know  you,  too. 


200  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Second  Peasant.     Whose  are  you  ? 

Tanya.  I  am  the  orphan  child  of  Aksinya,  the  sol- 
dier's widow. 

First  and  Third  Peasants  (m  wonderment).     Well ! 

Second  Peasant.  Not  in  vain  they  say  :  Pay  a  penny 
for  a  pig,  put  him  in  the  rye,  and  he  will  grow  big. 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality.  Something  like  a  mam- 
zelle. 

Third  Peasant.     That's  so.     0  Lord  ! 

Vasili  Leonidych  (rings  the  hell  behind  the  scene,  and 
then  cries).     Grigori !     Grigori ! 

First  Peasant.  Who  is  disturbing  you  so  much,  for 
example  ? 

Tanya.     This  is  the  young  master. 

Third  Peasant.  0  Lord !  He  said  we  had  better 
wait  on  the  outside.     (Silence.) 

Second  Peasant.     Is  Semen  going  to  marry  you  ? 

Tanya.  Has  he  written  you  about  it?  (Covers  her- 
self with  the  apron.) 

Second  Peasant.  You  see  he  has  !  He  is  not  doing 
right.     I  see  the  lad  is  getting  spoiled. 

Tanya  (lively).  No,  he  is  not  at  all  spoiled.  Shall  I 
send  him  to  you  ? 

Second  Peasant.  What  is  the  use  of  sending  for 
him  ?     There  will  be  plenty  of  time  ! 

(There  are  heard  the  desperate  cries  of   Vasili  Leo- 
nidych :  "  Grigori,  the  devil  take  you  ! "  ) 

Scene  XVIII.     The  same  and  (in  the  door)  Vasili  Leo- 
nidych (in  shirt,  putting  on  his  eye-glasses). 

Vasili  Leonidych.     Are  they  all  dead  ? 

Tanya.  He  is  not  here,  Vasili  Leonidych  —  I  will 
send  liim  at  once.     (Goes  toivard  the  door.) 

Vasili  Leonidych.  I  hear  some  voices  here.  Who 
are  these  scarecrows  ?     Eh  ? 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     201 

Tanya.  These  are  peasants  from  the  Kursk  village, 
Vasili  Leonidych  ! 

Vasili  Leonidych  {to  the  messenger).  And  who  is 
that  ?     Oh,  yes,  from  Bourdier  ! 

i^The peasants  how.  'Vasili  Leonidych  pays  no  atten- 
tion to  them.  Grigori  meets  Tanya  at  the  door. 
Tanya  remains.) 

Scene  XIX.     The  same  and  Grigori. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  I  tuld  you  the  other  shoes !  I 
cannot  wear  these ! 

Grigori.     The  others  are  standing  there,  too. 

Vasili  Leonidych.     Where  ? 

Grigorl     In  the  same  place. 

Vasili  Leonidych.     You  are  lying. 

Grigori.  You  will  see  for  yourself.  ( Vasili  Leonidych 
and  Grigori  exeunt.) 

Scene  XX.     Tanya,  three  peasants,  and  Messenger. 

Third  Peasant.  Maybe,  let  me  say,  it  is  not  time 
now,  and  we  had  better  go  to  our  lodging  and  wait 
awhile. 

Tanya.  No,  never  mind,  just  wait.  I  will  bring  you 
at  once  some  plates  for  the  presents.     {Exit.) 

Scene  XXL     The  same,  Sakhatov,  Leonid    F^dorovich, 
followed  by  F^dor  Ivanych. 

{The  peasants  pick  up  the  presents  and   strike  an 
attitude.) 
Leonid  Fedorovich  {to  the  peasants).     In  a  minute,  in  a 
minute,  just  wait!    {To  the  messenger.)    And  who  is  this? 
Messenger.     From  Bourdier. 
Leonid  Fedorovich.     Ah,  from  Bourdier. 


202  THE    FKUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Sakhatov  {smiling).  I  do  not  deny.  But  you  will 
admit  that,  not  having  seen  all  that  of  which  you  speak, 
it  is  hard  for  one  of  our  kind,  who  are  not  initiated  in 
the  matter,  to  believe  it. 

Leonid  Fedohovich.  You  say  you  cannot  believe  it. 
But  we  do  not  even  demand  faith.  We  demand  that  you 
investigate  it.  How  can  I  help  not  believing  in  this  ring  ? 
I  received  my  riug  from  there. 

Sakhatov.     From  there  ?     From  where  ? 

Leonid  Fedokovich.     From  the  other  world.     Yes. 

Sakhatov  {smiling).  Very  interesting !  Very  inter- 
esting ! 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  Granted,  you  think  that  I  am 
easily  carried  away,  that  I  imagine  that  which  is  not ; 
but  Aleksyey  Vladimirovich  Krugosvy^tlov  is  not  so 
easily  to  be  brushed  aside,  —  he  is  a  professor,  and  he 
acknowledges  all  that.  Nor  is  he  alone  in  this.  And 
Crooks?     And  Wallace?' 

Sakhatov.  I  do  not  deny.  All  I  say  is  that  it  is 
very  interesting.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  how 
Krugosvy^tlov  explains  it. 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  He  has  a  theory  of  his  own. 
Come  to  see  us  this  evening.  At  first  Grossman  will  — 
you  know  he  is  a  famous  mind-reader. 

Sakhatov.  Yes,  I  have  heard  of  him,  but  have  never 
had  a  chance  of  seeing  him. 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  So  come  !  At  first  Grossman, 
and  then  Kapchich,  and  our  mediumistic  stance  —  {To 
IvdnycJi).  Has  the  messenger  come  back  from  Kap- 
chich ? 

Fed  ok  Ivanych.     Not  yet. 

Sakhatov.     How  am  I  to  find  out  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Come,  come  all  the  same  !  If  Kap- 
chich will  not  come,  we  will  find  another  medium.  Marya 
Ignatevna  is  a  medium,  not  so  strong  as  Kapchich,  but 
still  a  medium. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     203 

Scene  XXII.     The  same   and  Tanya   {coming  with  the 
plates  for  the  presents.    Listening  to  the  conversation). 

Sakhatov  {smiling).  Yes,  yes.  Here  is  a  circum- 
stance that  puzzles  me:  why  are  the  mediums  always 
from  what  we  would  call  the  educated  class  ?  Both 
Kapchich  and  Marya  Ignatevna.  If  it  is  a  special  power 
they  possess,  it  ought  to  be  met  with  everywhere,  even 
among  peasants. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  And  so  it  is.  This  occurs  quite 
often :  we  have  a  peasant  in  our  house  who  has  proved  to 
be  a  medium.  The  other  day  we  called  him  in  during 
the  stance.  It  was  necessary  to  move  a  divan,  and  we 
had  all  forgotten  about  him.  He  had  evidently  fallen 
asleep.  And  just  imagine:  our  stance  was  over,  Kapchich 
awoke,  and  suddenly  we  noticed  mediumistic  manifesta- 
tions in  the  other  corner  of  the  room,  near  the  peasant,  — 
the  table  moved. 

Tanya  {aside).  That  was  when  I  crawled  out  from 
under  the  table. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Apparently  he,  too,  is  a  medium, 
—  the  more  so  since  he  resembles  Hume  in  face  —  Do 
you  remember  Hume  ?     The  naive  blond. 

Sakhatov  {shrugging  his  shoulders).  I  declare !  This 
is  very  interesting.     Then  you  ought  to  test  him. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  We  are  testing  him.  But  he  is 
not  the  only  one.  There  are  no  end  of  mediums.  We 
simply  do  not  know  them.  Only  the  other  day  a  sickly 
old  woman  moved  a  stone  wall. 

Sakhatov.     Moved  a  stone  wall  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes,  yes.  She  was  lying  in  bed 
and  did  not  at  all  know  that  she  was  a  medium.  She 
pressed  her  hand  against  the  wall,  and  the  wall  gave 
way. 

Sakhatov.     And  did  not  cave  in  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     And  did  not  cave  in. 


204     THE  FKUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Sakhatov.     Strange  —      Well,  I  will  be  here  in  the 
evening. 

Leonid    Fedorovich.     Do    come !     There    will   be    a 
stance  in  any  case. 

(Sakhdtov  puts  on  his  overcoat.     Leonid  Fedorovich 
sees  him  out.) 


Scene  XXIII.     The  same,  without  Sakhatov. 

Messenger  {to  Tanya).  Tell  the  lady !  Am  I  tc 
stay  here  overnight  ? 

Tanya.  Wait  a  little !  She  is  going  to  drive  out  with 
the  young  lady,  and  so  she  will  be  out  soon.     {Exit.) 

Scene   XXIV,     The  same,  ivithout  Tanya. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {walks  over  to  the  peasants.  TJie 
peasants  how  and  offer  /it'm  the  presents).  There  is  no 
need  of  that ! 

First  Peasant  {smiling).  This  originates  from  our 
first  duty.     Thus  even  the  Commune  has  ordered  us. 

Second  Peasant.     This  is  the  proper  thing. 

Third  Peasant.  Don't  mention  it !  Because  we  are 
very  much  satisfied  —  As  our  parents,  let  me  say,  served 
your  parents,  even  thus  we  wish  with  all  our  hearts,  and 
not  merely —     {Bov's.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  What  is  it?  What  is  it  you 
want  ? 

First  Peasant.  We  have  come  to  your  Grace,  so  to 
speak. 

Scene  XXV.     The  same  and  Petrishchev  {quickly  runs 

in  in  his  overcoat). 

Petrishchev.  Is  Vasili  Leonidych  up  ?  {Seeing  Leonid 
Fedorovich,  he  hows  to  him  with  his  head  only.) 


THE  FRUITS  OF  EXLIGUTENMENT     205 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Are  you  going  to  my  son  ? 
Petrishchev.     I  ?     Yes,   I  want  to  see  Vovo  for  a 
minute. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Go  on,  go  on  ! 

{Petrishchev  takes  off  his  overcoat  and  walks  away 
rapidly.) 

Scene  XXVL     The  same,  tvithout  Petrishchev. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  (to  the  peasants).  Yes.  Well,  so 
what  do  you  want  ? 

Second  Peasant.     Accept  our  presents ! 

First  Peasant  {smiling).  So  to  speak,  the  country 
prepositions. 

Third  Peasant.  Don't  even  mention  it!  We  greet 
you  as  a  father.     So,  don't  mention  it  I 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Well —  Fedor,  receive  these 
things ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  give  them  to  me  !  {Takes  the 
'presents.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Now,  what  business  is  it  ? 

First  Peasant.     We  have  come  to  your  Grace. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  I  see  you  have  come  to  see  me. 
But  what  do  you  wdsh  ? 

First  Peasant.  To  make  a  motion  in  regard  to  the 
accomplishment  of  the  sale  of  the  land.      It  originates  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  What  is  it?  Are  you  buying 
land  ? 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  it  is  so.  It  originates  — 
So  to  speak  in  regard  to  the  purchase  of  the  proprietorship 
of  land.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Commune  has  inpow- 
ered  us  to  enter  it,  so  to  speak,  as  is  proper,  through  the 
government  bank,  with  adhesion  of  a  stamp  of  the  legal- 
ized date. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  That  is,  you  wish  to  buy  land 
through  the  bank,  —  am  I  right  ? 


206     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

First  Peasant.  That  is  as  you  had  made  the  prepo- 
sition to  us  last  year.  It  originates,  so  to  speak,  from  the 
sum  in  its  totality  of  32,864  roubles  for  the  purchase  of 
the  proprietorship  of  the  land. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.    That  is  so.    How  about  the  pay  ? 

First  Peasant.  In  respect  to  the  pay  the  Commune 
preposes,  as  has  been  said  last  year,  to  depone,  so  to 
speak,  the  reception  of  the  cash,  by  the  laws  of  the  stat- 
utes, in  the  totality  of  four  thousand  roubles. 

Second  Peasant.  That  is,  you  will  get  four  thousand 
now,  and  for  the  rest  you  are  to  wait. 

Third  Peasant  (unrolling  the  money).  You  may  be 
sure  we  will  pawn  ourselves,  but  we  will  not  do,  let  me 
say,  in  any  slipshod  manner,  but,  let  me  say,  so  to  speak, 
as  is  proper. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  But  I  wrote  to  you  that  I 
should  be  willing  only  in  case  you  had  collected  all  the 
money. 

First  Peasant.  This  would,  in  rivality,  be  pleasanter, 
but  it  is  not  in  the  possibilities,  so  to  speak. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  cannot  help  it. 

First  Peasant.  The  Commune,  for  example,  has  been 
relaying  on  your  preposition  of  last  year  to  depone  the 
payment  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  That  was  last  year ;  then  I  was 
willing,  but  now  I  cannot  — 

Second  Peasant,  How  is  that  ?  You  had  given  us 
hope,  and  we  had  the  paper  written  up,  and  the  money 
collected. 

Third  Peasant.  Have  pity  on  us,  father.  Our  laud 
is  small,  there  is  not  enough  room  to  drive  out  a  cow, 
nay,  not  even  a  chick,  let  me  say.  (Bows.)  Don't  sin, 
father !     (Boivs.) 

Leonid  Fl^iDOROViCH.  I  must  say  it  is  true  that  I  was 
willing  last  year  to  postpone  the  payment,  but  something 
has  happened  —  and  so  it  is  not  convenient  for  me  now. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  207 

Second  Peasant.  Without  the  land  we  shall  have  to 
give  up  liviug. 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  without  the  land  our 
domicility  must  weaken  and  ruin  will  originate. 

Tried  Peasant  (bowing).  Father!  The  land  is 
small :  there  is  no  place  to  drive  out  a  cow,  nay,  not  even 
a  chick.  Father,  have  pity  on  us !  Accept  the  money, 
father ! 

Leonid  Fedoeovich  {in  the  meaniuliile  looks  through 
the  document).  I  understand.  I  should  like  to  do  you  a 
kindness.  Wait.  I  will  oive  vou  an  answer  in  half  an 
hour —     Fedor,  tell  them  not  to  receive  anybody. 

F:^poE  IvANYCH.     Very  well.  (Leonid  Fedorovich  exit.) 

Scene  XXVII.     The  same,  vjithout  Leonid  Fedorovich. 
{Tlie  peasants  arc  downcast.) 

Second  Peasant.  What  a  business !  He  says : 
"  Hand  us  the  whole  amount ! "  Where  shall  we  take 
it  from  ? 

FiEST  Peasant.  If  he  had  not  given  us  hope  last 
year.  For  we  have,  in  rivahty,  been  relaying  on  what  he 
told  us  last  year. 

Third  Peasant.  0  Lord !  I  had  already  unrolled 
the  money.  ( Wraps  iip  the  money.)  What  are  we  going 
to  do  now  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? 

First  Peasant.  Our  business,  honourable  man,  de- 
pends, for  example,  like  this :  he  had  proposed  to  us  last 
year  to  depone  the  payments.  The  Commune  met  in 
opinion  and  inpowered  us ;  and  now,  for  example,  he 
preposes  to  give  him  the  whole  sum  in  totality.  But  the 
business  comes  out  impossibly. 

Fedoe  Ivanych.     How  much  money  is  it  ? 

FiEST  Peasant.  The  whole  sum  in  entrance  is  four 
thousand  roubles,  so  to  speak. 


208  THE    J'RUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  hump  yourselves  and  get  some 
more ! 

First  Peasant.  We  have  collected  this  with  difficulty. 
There  is  not  enough  powder  for  these  considerations,  sir. 

Second  Peasant.  When  there  is  none,  you  can't  get 
it  with  your  teeth. 

Third  Peasant.  We  should  like  to,  but,  we  will  say, 
we  have  swept  this  up  with  a  broom,  as  it  is. 

Scene  XXVIII.     The   same,  Vasili  Leonidych,  and  Pe- 
trishchev  {at  the  door,  both  with  cigarettes). 

Yasili  Leonidych.  I  told  you  I  would  try.  I  will  do 
my  level  best.     Ah,  what  ? 

Petrishchev.  You  must  know  that  if  you  do  not  get 
it,  the  devil  knows  what  a  nasty  affair  it  will  be ! 

Yasili  Leonidych.  I  told  you  I  would  try,  and  I  will. 
Ah,  what  ? 

Petrishchev.  Nothing.  I  only  say  I  want  you  to 
be  sure  and  get  it.  I  will  wait.  {Goes  away,  closing  the 
door.) 

Scene  XXIX.     The  same,  without  Petrishchev. 

Yasili  Leonidych  {waving  his  hand).  The  devil 
knows  what  it  is  ! 

{The  peasants  how.) 

Yasili  Leonidych  {looking  at  the  messenger.  To  Fedor 
Ivanych).  Why  don't  you  let  off  this  man  from  Bour- 
dier  ?  He  has  come  to  stay  here.  Look  there,  he  is 
asleep.     Ah,  what  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  He  brought  a  note  —  He  was  told 
to  wait  until  Anna  Pavlovna  would  come  out. 

Yasili  Leonidych  {looking  at  the  peasants  and  gazing 
at   the  money).     What  is   this,  —  money  ?     For  whom  ? 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  209 

Money  for  us  ?  {To  Fcdor  Ivdnych)  "Who  are  these 
people  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  The  Kursk  peasants.  They  have 
come  to  buy  land. 

Vasili  Leonidych.     Is  it  sold  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  No,  they  have  not  come  to  any 
agreement  yet.      They  are  stingy. 

Vasili  Leonid ych.  Ah  ?  I  must  persuade  them.  {To 
the  peasants.)     Well,  are  you  buying,  ah  ? 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality  we  prepose  as  to  how  to 
acquire  the  ownership  of  the  possession  of  land. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  You  mus.t  not  be  too  stingy.  You 
know,  I  will  tell  you  how  a  peasant  needs  the  land !  Ah, 
what  ?     Does  he  need  it  very  much  ? 

First  PEASyVNT.  In  rivality,  the  land  is  necessitous  to 
a  peasant,  A  number  one.     That  is  so. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Well,  then  don't  be  so  stingy. 
What  is  the  land  ?  You  may  sow  the  wheat  in  rows 
upon  it.  You  can  take  three  hundred  puds,  at  a  rouble  a 
pud,  which  is  three  hundred  roubles.  Ah,  what  ?  And 
if  you  plant  mint,  you  can  skin  a  thousand  roubles  out  of 
a  desyatina,  I  tell  you. 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  this  is  complete,  —  all 
the  produces  may  be  advanced  into  action,  if  one  has  a 
comprehension. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Then  sow  mint  by  all  means.  I 
have  studied  it.  They  print  that  way  in  books.  I  will 
show  it  to  you.     Ah,  what  ? 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  regardly  this  subject, — 
you  can  see  better  in  books.  It  is  intelligentness,  so  to 
speak. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Buy  it  then,  and  don't  be  so 
stingy  !  Give  the  money  !  ( To  Fedor  Ivdnych.)  Where 
is  papa  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  At  home.  He  asked  not  to  be  dis^ 
turbed  now. 


210     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Well,  I  suppose  he  is  asking  the 
spirit  whether  to  sell  the  land  or  not.     Ah,  what  ? 

Fedor  Iyanych.  I  can't  say.  I  know  that  he  went 
away  in  indecision. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  What  do  you  think,  FMor  Ivanych, 
has  he  any  money  ?     Ah,  what  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  don't  know.  Hardly.  Why  do 
you  want  to  know?     You  took  a  good  slice  of  it  last 

week  ! 

Vasili  Leonidych.  But  I  gave  that  away  for  the 
dogs.  You  know  we  have  a  new  society:  Petrishchev 
has  been  elected,  and  I^  have  taken  some  money  from 
Petrishchev,  so  I  have  to  pay  now  for  him  and  for  myself. 

Ah,  what  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  kind  of  a  new  society  is  it  ? 

Of  bicyclists  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  No.  I  will  tell  you  in  a  minute : 
it  is  a  new  society.  Let  me  tell  you,  a  very  serious 
society.     And  do  you  know  who  is  the  president  of  it  ? 

Ah,  what  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  does  this  new  society  consist 

in  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  A  society  for  the  encouragement 
of  breeding  ancient  Eussian  stout-bodied  dogs.  Ah,  what  ? 
Let  me  tell  you :  to-day  is  the  first  meeting  and  a  lunch. 
And  I  have  no  money.  I  will  go  to  him,  and  will  try. 
{Exit  through  the  door.) 

Scene  XXX.     The  peasants,  F^dor  Ivanych,  and  Mes- 
senger. 

First  Peasant  {to  Fedor  Ivanych).  Honourable  man, 
.  who  is  this  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych  {smiling).     The  young  gentleman. 

Third  Peasant.  The  heir,  let  us  say.  0  Lordl 
{Hides  the  money.)     I  had  better  put  it  away  in  time. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  211 

First  Peasant.  We  were  told  that  he  was  a  military 
man,  in  the  meritoriousness  of  the  cavalry,  for  example. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  iSTo.  Being  an  only  son,  he  is  free 
from  military  service. 

Third  Peasant.  He  is  left  to  take  care  of  his  parents, 
let  us  say.     That  is  regular. 

Second  Peasant  {shaking  Ms  head).  Nice  care  he  will 
take  of  them ! 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord ! 


Scene  XXXI.  F^dor  Ivanych,  three  peasants,  Vasili 
Leonidych,  and  {after  him  at  the  door)  Leonid 
F^dorovich. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  It  is  always  that  way.  Really  it 
is  wonderful.  At  first  they  say  that  I  have  no  occupa- 
tion, and  when  I  find  an  activity  and  am  busy,  —  a  seri- 
ous society  has  been  founded  pursuing  noble  aims,  —  you 
begrudge  me  some  paltry  three  hundred  roubles ! 

Leonid  Fedoroyich.  I  told  you  I  could  not,  and  that 
is  the  end  of  it.     I  have  none. 

Vasili  Leonidych.     But  you  have  sold  the  land  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  In  the  first  place,  I  have  not 
sold  it ;  and,  above  everything  else,  leave  me  in  peace ! 
You  were  told  that  I  was  busy.     {Slams  the  door.) 


Scene  XXXII.     The  same,  without  Leonid  Fedorovich. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  told  you  this  was  not  the  time 
for  it. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  I  tell  you  this  is  a  bad  business 
for  me,  ah  ?  I  will  go  to  mamma,  —  this  will  be  my  only 
salvation.  He  is  raving  with  his  spiritualism,  and  is  for- 
getting everybody.  {Goes  upstairs.'  Fedor  Ivanych  sits 
i^own  to  read  his  paper.) 


212     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  XXXIII.     The   same.     Betsy   and  Marya   Kon- 
stantinovna  come  doivn-stairs,  followed  hy  Grigori. 

Betsy.     Is  the  carriage  ready  ? 

Grigori.     It  is  driving  up. 

Betsy  (to  Mdrya  KonsluiLtinovna).  Come,  come !  I 
saw  that  it  was  he ! 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     What  he  ? 

Betsy.     You  know  very  well  that  it  is  Petrishchev. 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     Where  is  he  ? 

Betsy.  He  is  sitting  in  Vovo's  room.  You  will  see 
yourself. 

Marya  Konstantinovna.  But  suppose  it  is  not  he  ? 
( The  peasants  and  the  messenger  hoiv.) 

Betsy  {to  the  messenger).  Ah,  you  are  from  Bourdier, 
with  the  dress  ? 

Messenger.     Yes,  madam.     May  I  go  now  ? 

Betsy.     I  do  not  know.     This  is  for  mamma. 

Messenger.  I  do  not  know  for  whom.  I  was  ordered 
to  bring  it  here  and  get  the  money  for  it. 

Betsy.     Well,  then  wait ! 

Marya  Konstantinovna.  Is  this  the  same  costume 
for  the  charade  ? 

Betsy.  Yes,  a  superb  costume !  But  mamma  does 
not  take  it,  and  does  not  wish  to  pay  for  it. 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     Why  ? 

Betsy.  You  ask  mamma.  For  Vovo's  dogs  it  is  not 
too  much  to  pay  five  liundred  roubles,  but  for  a  dress  one 
hundred  is  too  much.  I  certainly  can't  play  as  a  scare- 
crow !     ( To  the  peasants.)     Who  are  these  ?     . 

Grigori.  Peasants.  They  have  come  to  buy  some 
land. 

Betsy.  I  thought  they  were  hunters.  Are  you  not 
hunters  ? 

First  Peasant.  Not  by  any  means,  madam.  We 
are  here  in  regard  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  sale 


THE  FKUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     213 

of  the  transfer  of  the  land.  We  came  to  see  Leonid 
F^dorovich. 

Betsy.  But  how  is  that  ?  I  am  sure  hunters  were  to 
come  for  Vovo.  Truly,  you  are  no  hunters?  {TJie  jJeas- 
ants  het}')  silent.)  How  stupid  they  are  !  (  Walks  over  to 
the  door.)     Vovo !     {Laughs.) 

Maeya  Konstantinovna.  We  met  him  just  a  little 
while  ago. 

Betsy.  Who  asks  you  to  remember  that  ?  Vovo,  are 
you  here  ? 

Scene  XXXIV.     The  same  and  Petrishchev. 

Peteishchev.  Vovo  is  not  here,  but  I  am  ready  to  do 
all  that  is  expected  of  him.  Good  morning !  Good 
morning,  Mary  a  Konstantinovna  !  {For  a  long  time 
firmly  presses  Betsy  s  and  then  Mdrya  Konstantinovna' s 
hand.) 

Second  Peasant.  I  declare,  he  looks  as  though  he 
were  pumping  water ! 

Betsy.  You  can't  take  his  place,  but  still  you  are 
better  than  nothing.  {Laughing.)  What  kind  of  busi- 
ness have  you  with  Vovo  ? 

Petrishchev.  Business  ?  Fi-nancial  business,  that  is, 
our  business  is  fie !  and  at  the  same  time  nancial,  besides 
being  financial. 

Betsy.     What  do  you  mean  by  nancial  ? 

Peteishchev.  That  is  the  question  !  The  trick  is  it 
does  not  mean  anything ! 

Betsy.  Now,  that  was  not  a  success,  not  at  all ! 
{Laughs.) 

Peteishchev.  You  can't  make  it  a  success  every  time. 
It  is  hke  a  raffle.  At  first  it  is  nothing,  and  again  noth- 
ing, and  then  there  is  a  prize. 

{Fedor   Ivdnych  walks   i^ito    the   cahinet  of  Leonid 
Fedorovich.) 


214     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  XXXV.     The  same  without  F^dor  Ivanych. 

Betsy.  This  was  not  a  success.  Tell  me,  were  you 
yesterday  at  the  Mergasovs'  ? 

Petrishchev.  Not  so  much  at  mere  Gassof  as  at  pere 
Gassof,  and  not  even  pere  Gassof  as  Jils  Gassof. 

Betsy.  Can't  you  get  along  without  puns  ?  It  is  a 
disease.     Were  there  any  gipsies  there  ?     (Laughs.) 

Petrishchev  (sings).  "  Birds  upon  her  apron  fair, 
golden  combs  upon  her  hair  !  " 

Betsy.  How  fortunate  you  are  !  It  was  so  dull  for  us 
at  Fofo's. 

Petrishchev  (continuing  to  chant).  "  And  she  swore 
most  solemnly,  she  would  stay  —  "  What  is  the  rest  ? 
Marya  Konstantinovna,  what  is  the  rest  ? 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     "  An  hour  with  me  —  " 

Petrishchev.  How?  How  is  it,  Marya  Konstanti- 
novna ?     (Laughs.) 

Betsy.     Cessez,  vous  devenez  impossible  ! 

Petrishchev.     J'ai  cesse,  fai  hebe,  fai  dede  — 

Betsy.  I  see  only  one  means  of  getting  rid  of  your 
puns,  and  that  is  to  make  you  sing.  Let  us  go  to  Vovd's 
room  !  There  is  a  guitar  there.  Come,  Marya  Konstan- 
tinovna, come ! 

(Betsy,  Marya  Konstantinovna,  and  Petrishchev  walk 
into  the  room  of  Vasili  Leonidych.) 

Scene  XXXVI.     Grigori,  three  peasants,  and  Messenger. 

First  Peasant.     Who  are  these  people  ? 

Grigori.  One  is  the  young  lady,  and  the  other  a  mam- 
zelle  who  teaches  music. 

First  Peasant.  She  promotes  into  science,  so  to 
speak.     And  how  accurate  she  is,  a  regular  portrait ! 

Second  Peasant.  Why  don't  they  marry  them  off? 
They  are  advanced  in  years,  it  seems. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     215 

Grigoei.  You  expect  them  to  marry  at  fifteen,  as  with 
you  ? 

First  Peasant.  And  the  man,  for  example,  is  a  musi- 
cianist  ? 

Grigoei  (mocking  him).  A  musicianist !  You  do  not 
understand  a  thing  ! 

First  Peasant.  This  is,  in  rivality,  our  stupidity,  so  to 
speak,  our  ignorance. 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

{Gipsi/  songs  accompanied  with  a  guitar  are  heard 
in  Vasili  Leonidych's  room.) 

* 

Scene  XXXVII.  Grigori,  three  peasants,  Messenger. 
Enter  Sem^u  and,  after  him,  Tanya.  {Tanya  watches 
the  meeting  of  father  and  son.) 

Grigori  (to  Semen).     What  do  you  want  ? 
Semen.     I  was  sent  to  Mr.  Kapchich's. 
Geigoei.     Well  ? 

Semen.  He  gave  me  the  oral  message  that  he  could 
not  come  under  any  consideration. 

Geigoei.     All  right.     I  will  report  so.     (Exit.) 

Scene  XXXVIII,     The  same,  without  Grigori. 

Semen  (to  his  father).  You  are  welcome,  father  !  My 
respects  to  Uncle  Efim  and  Uncle  Mitri !     All  well  at 

home  ? 

Second  Peasant.     Welcome,  Sem^n  ! 

First  Peasant.     Welcome,  friend  ! 

Third  Peasant.     Welcome,  lad  !     Doing  well  ? 

Semen  (smiling).  Well,  father,  come  and  have  some 
tea  with  me ! 

Second  Peasant.  Wait  till  we  get  through  here. 
Don't  you  see  we  are  busy  ? 

Semen.     Very  well,  I  wiU  wait  near  the  steps.    (Exit.) 


216     THE  FEUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Tanya  (running  after  Mm).  Why  did  you  not  say 
anything  ? 

Semen.  How  could  I  say  anything  in  presence  of 
people  ?  Give  me  a  chance  !  I  will  tell  him  at  tea 
{Exit.) 

Scene  XXXIX.  The  same,  without  Semen.  {Fedor 
Ivdnych  comes  out  and  sits  down  near  the  window 
with  his  newspaper.) 

First  Peasant.  Well,  honourable  man,  how  does  our 
affair  originate  ?        * 

Fedok  Ivanych.  Wait !  He  will  be  out  soon,  he  is 
getting  through. 

Tanya  (to  Fedor  Ivdnych).  How  do  you  know  he  is 
getting  through  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  know,  because  when  he  gets 
through  with  a  question  he  reads  aloud  the  question  and 
the  answer. 

Tanya.  Is  it  true  that  you  can  talk  with  spirits  by 
means  of  the  saucer  ? 

Fedor   Ivanych.     It  seems  so. 

Tanya.     Will  he  sign  if  they  tell  him  to  ? 

Fedor   Ivanych.     Of  course,  he  will. 

Tanya.     But  they  don't  talk  with  words  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  No,  by  means  of  the  alphabet.  He 
notices  opposite  what  letter  it  stops. 

Tanya.     Well,  and  if  a  stance  ? 

Scene   XL.     The  same  and  Leonid  F^dorovich. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Well,  my  friends,  I  can't.  I 
should  like  to  very  much,  but  I  can't  by  any  means.  If 
you  had  all  the  money,  it  would  be  different. 

First  Peasant.  Nothing  would  be  better  in  rivality. 
But  the  people  are  not  well-to-do,  they  can't  do  it. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     217 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  I  can't,  I  can't  by  any  means. 
Here  is  your  paper.     I  can't  sign  it. 

Third  Peasant.  Father,  pity  us,  take  mercy  on 
us ! 

Second  Peasant.  Why  do  you  do  so?  This  is  an 
offence. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  There  is  no  offence  meant, 
friends.  I  told  you  then,  in  the  summer,  "  If  you  want 
to,  all  right!"  You  did  not  want  to,  and  now  I 
cannot. 

Third  Peasant.  Father,  have  mercy  on  us !  How 
are  we  to  live  ?  The  land  is  small :  there  is  not 
enough  room  to  drive  out  a  cow,  nay,  a  chick,  let 
me  say.  [Leonid  Fedorovich  walks  away  and  stops  in 
the  door.) 

Scene  XLI.  The  same,  Anna  Pavlovna,  and  Doctor, 
descending  the  stairs.  Followed  Ijy  Vasili  Leonidych, 
in  a  happy  and  playful  frame  of  mind,  putting  the 
money  into  his  pocketbook. 

Anna  Pavlovna  (tightly  laced,  wearing  a  hat).  So 
shall  I  take  them  ? 

Doctor.  Take  them  if  the  symptoms  are  repeated. 
Above  everything  else,  conduct  yourself  properly.  How 
can  you  expect  thick  syrup  to  pass  through  a  capillary 
tube,  especially  if  you  compress  that  tube  ?  Impossible  ! 
Just  so  it  is  with  the  bihary  ducts.  This  is  all  very 
simple. 

Anna    Pavlovna.     Well,  all  right,  all  right. 

Doctor.  You  say  it  is  all  right,  and  go  on  as  of 
old.  Madam,  you  can't  do  it,  you  can't.  Well,  good- 
bye! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Not  good-bye,  but  au  revoir.  I  shall 
be  waiting  for  you  in  the  evening,  —  without  you  I  sha'n't 
risk  it. 


218     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Doctor.  Very  well,  very  well.  If  I  have  time,  I 
will  call.     {Exit.) 

Scene    XLII.     The  same,  without  Doctor. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {seeing  the  peasants).  What  is  this  ? 
What  is  this  ?  What  kind  of  people  are  these  ?  {Feas- 
ants how.) 

Fedor  Ivanych.  These  are  peasants  from  the  Kursk 
estate :  they  have  come  to  see  Leonid  .F^dorovich  about 
the  purchase  of  some  land. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  I  see  that  they  are  peasants.  But 
v;ho  has  admitted  them  ? 

Pedor  Ivanych.  Leonid  F^dorovich  has  ordered  them 
to  come.  Leonid  F^dorovich  has  just  been  talking  with 
them  about  the  sale  of  the  land. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  What  sale  ?  There  is  no  need  of 
selling  it.  Above  everything  else,  how  could  you  let  the 
people  from  the  street  straight  into  the  house  ?  How 
could  you  let  people  in  from  the  street  ?  People  that 
sleep  God  knows  where  must  not  be  admitted  to  the 
house —  {Becoming  ever  more  excited.)  The  folds  of  their 
dresses  are  full  of  all  kinds  of  microbes :  of  scarlet  fever 
microbes,  of  smallpox  microbes,  of  diphtheria  microbes ! 
They  are  from  Kursk,  from  the  Government  of  Kursk, 
where  there  is  an  epidemic  of  diphtheria !  —  Doctor, 
doctor  !     Bring  back  the  doctor  ! 

{Leonid  Fedorovich  goes  away,  closing  the  door.     Gri- 
gori  exit  for  the  doctor.) 

Scene    XLIII.     The    same,   without   Leonid    FMorovich 

and  Grisori. 


&"■ 


Vasili  Leonidych  {smoking  into  the  peasants'  faces). 
Never  mind,  mamma  !  If  you  want  to,  I  will  fumigate  them 
so  that  all  the  microbes  will  give  up  their  ghost.     Ah,  what  ? 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     219 

(Anna  Pdvlovna  keeps  strict  silence,  awaiting  the 
return  of  the  doctor.) 

Vasili  Leoxidych  {to  the  peasants).  Do  you  fatten 
pigs  ?     That  is  profitable  ! 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  we  now  and  then  let 
loose  on  the  pig  business. 

Vasili  Leonid ych.  Like  this  —  yoo,  yooo.  {Grunts 
like  a  young  pig.) 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Vovd,  Vovo  !  Stop ! 

Vasili   Leonidych.     Is  it  correct  ?     Ah,  what  ? 

FiEST  Peasant.     In  rivality,  there  is  similarity. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Vovo,  stop,  I  tell  you  ! 

Second  Peasant.     What  is  that  for  ? 

Third  Peasant.  I  told  you  we  had  better  stay  in 
our  lodging  — 

Scene    XLIV.     The  same,  Doctor,  and  Grigori. 

Doctor.     \Vhiat  is  it  again  ?     What  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  tell  me  not  to  be  agitated. 
How  can  I  be  calm  ?  I  have  not  seen  my  sister  for 
two  months ;  I  beware  of  every  suspicious  visitor,  —  and 
suddenly  these  people  come  from  Kursk,  —  straight  from 
Kursk,  where  there  is  an  epidemic  of  diphtheria,  —  and 
straight  into  my  house  ! 

Doctor.     You  refer  to  these  good  fellows  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Yes,  straight  from  a  locality  where 
there  is  diphtheria ! 

Doctor.  Of  course,  if  they  come  from  a  diphtheria 
centre,  it  is  careless,  but  there  is  no  cause  for  agita- 
tion. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     But  you  yourself  prescribe  caution  ! 

Doctor.  Yes,  yes,  but  there  is  no  cause  for  being  so 
agitated. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  But  there  will  have  to  be  a  com- 
plete disinfection. 


220  THE   FRUITS   OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

DocTOK.  No,  not  complete,  —  that  is  too  expensive, 
something  like  three  hundred  roubles,  aud  even  more. 
But  I  will  fix  it  cheaply  and  just  as  efficaciously.  To  a 
big  bottle  of  water  take  — 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Boiled  water  ? 

DocTOK.  Makes  no  difference.  Boiled  water  is  better. 
To  a  bottle  of  water  take  a  tablespoon  of  sahcyHc  acid,  and 
have  them  wash  everytliing  which  they  have  touched, 
and  the  good  fellows,  of  course,  must  be  sent  away.  That 
is  all.  Then  you  need  have  no  fear.  Sprinkle  two  or 
three  glasses  of  the  same  composition  through  the  air  by 
means  of  the  atomizer,  and  you  will  see  how  good  it  will 
all  be.     It  is  quite  harmless ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Where  is  Tanya  ?     Call  Tanya ! 

Scene  XLV.     The  same  and  Tanya. 

Tanya.     What  do  you  wish  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Do  you  know  the  big  bottle  in  the 
boudoir  ? 

Tanya.  From  which  they  have  been  sprinkling  on 
the  laundress  yesterday  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Yes,  yes.  What  else  could  I  mean  ? 
Take  this  bottle  and  wash  out  first  the  place  where  they 
are  standing  with  soap  and  then  with  that  — 

Tanya.     Yes,  madam.    I  know  how. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Then  take  the  atomizer  —  Still,  I 
will  be  back  and  will  do  it  myself. 

Doctor.  Do  as  I  tell  you,  and  have  no  fear !  Well, 
good-bye,  until  the  evening.    (Uxit.) 

Scene  XLVI.     The  same,  without  Doctor. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  And  drive  them  out,  so  .that  their 
breath  even  shall  not  be  here  !  Get  out,  get  out !  Go  ! 
What  are  you  waiting  for  ? 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     221 

FiKST  Peasant.  In  rivality,  we,  iu  our  foolishness,  as 
it  preposes  — 

Gkiguki  {tahiny  the  'peasants  out).  Come  now,  come 
now ! 

Second  Peasant.     Give  me  my  kerchief ! 

Third  Peasant.  0  Lord !  I  told  you  that  we  ought 
to  have  gone  in  the  meanwhile  to  our  lodging.  {Grigori 
pushes  them  out.) 


Scene    XLVIL   Anna  Pavlovna,  Grigori.  F^dor  Ivanych, 
Tanya,  Yasili  Leonidych,  and  Messenger. 

Messenger  (liaving  made  several  attempts  at  saying 
something.)     Will  there  be  any  answer  ? 

Anna  Pavlvona.  Ah,  this  is  from  Bourdier  ?  {Excit- 
edly.) Not  any,  not  any,  and  take  it  back !  I  told  her  I 
had  not  ordered  any  such  costume,  and  I  will  not  allow 
my  daughter  to  wear  it. 

Messenger.     I  can't  help  it.     I  was  sent. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Go,  go,  and  take  it  back  !  I  will 
call  there  myself. 

Vasili  Leonidych  {sole^nnly).  Mr.  Ambassador  from 
Bourdier,  go ! 

Messenger.  You  might  have  said  so  long  ago.  I 
have  been  sitting  here  five  hours. 

Vasili  Leonidych.     Emissary  of  Bourdier,  go  ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Please,  stop  !     {Messenger  exit) 


Scene  XLVIII.     The  same,  without  Messenger. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Betsy !  Where  is  she  ?  I  am 
eternally  having  to  wait  for  her ! 

Vasili  Leonidych  {yells  at  the  top  of  his  voice). 
Betsy  !  Petrishchev  !  Come  quick  !  Quick  !  Quick  !  Ah, 
what? 


222     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene    XLIX.     The  same,  Petrishchev,  Betsy,  and  Marya 

K  on  Stan  tino  vna. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  I  am  eternally  having  to  wait  for 
you. 

Betsy.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  I  who  have  been  wait- 
ing for  you.  (Petrishchev  bows  with  his  head  only  and 
kisses  Anna  Pdvlovna's  hand.) 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Good  morning !  {To  Betsy.)  You 
always  answer  back ! 

Betsy.  If  you  are  not  in  good  humour,  mother,  I 
prefer  not  to  drive  out. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Are  we  going  or  not  ? 

Betsy.     Yes,  let  us  go !    What  is  to  be  done  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Have  you  seen  the  costume  from 
Bourdier  ? 

Betsy.  I  have,  and  I  like  it  very  much.  I  ordered 
the  costume,  and  I  will  put  it  on,  when  it  is  paid  for. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  I  will  not  pay  for  it,  and  I  will  not 
permit  you  to  put  on  an  indecent  costume. 

Betsy.  What  has  made  it  indecent  all  at  once  ?  At 
first  it  was  proper,  and  now  you  are  prudish  — 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Not  prudish,  but  you  will  have  to 
get  the  whole  waist  made  over,  and  then  you  may. 

Betsy.     Mamma,  really,  that  can't  be  done  ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Well,  put  on  your  wraps  !  {Tliey  sit 
down.     Grigori  puts  on  their  overshoes.) 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Marya  Konstantinovna  !  Do  you 
see  what  emptiness  there  is  in  the  antechamber  ? 

Marya  Konstantinovna.  Why  ?  {Laughs  in  ad- 
vance.) 

Vasili  Leonidych.  The  fellow  from  Bourdier  has 
gone.     Ah,  what  ?     Is  it  good  ?     (Hoars.) 

Anna  Pavlovna.  WeU,  let  us  go  !  ( Goes  out  through 
the  door  and  imynediately  comes  hack.)     Tanya ! 

Tanya.     What  do  you  wish  ? 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     223 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Don't  let  Fifi  catch  cold  while  I  am 
away !  If  it  asks  to  be  let  out,  be  sure  and  put  on  the 
yellow  capote.     It  is  not  very  well. 

Tanya.  Yes,  madam.  {Aniia  Fdvlovna,  Betsy,  and 
Grigori  exeunt.) 

Scene   L.     Petnshchev,  Vasili    Leonidych,    Tanya,    and 

Fedor  Ivanych. 

Petrishchev.     Well,  did  you  get  it  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Let  me  tell  you,  I  got  it  with 
difficulty.  At  first  I  approached  my  male  parent,  —  he 
bellowed  and  kicked  me  out.  Then  I  went  to  my  mater- 
nal parent,  —  and  I  got  it !  Here  it  is  !  {Slaps  his  pocket.) 
When  I  undertake  a  thing,  they  don't  get  away  from  me, 
—  it's  a  dead  grip.  Ah,  what  ?  They  will  bring  my 
wolf-dogs  to-day  ? 

{Petrishchev  and  Vasili  Leomdych  jJut  on  their  wraps 
and  exeunt.      Tanya  follows  them.) 

Scene  LI.     F^dor  Ivanych  {alone). 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Yes,  nothing  but  unpleasantness. 
How  can  they  live  in  such  discord  ?  I  must  say  the 
younger  generation  is  not  exactly  right.  And  the  rule 
of  the  women  ?  \\Tien  lately  Leonid  Fedor ovich  wanted 
to  interfere  and  saw  that  she  was  in  ecstasy,  he  slammed 
the  door.  He  is  a  man  of  rare  kindness  !  Yes,  of  rare 
kindness  —  What  is  that  ?  Is  Tanya  bringing  them  in 
again  ? 


Scene    LIL     Fedor    Ivanych,    Tanya,   and  the   three 

peasants. 

Tanya.     Go,  go,  uncle,  never  mind  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.     Why  did  you  bring  them  in  again  ? 


224      THE  FKUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Tanya.  But,  F^dor  Ivanych,  we  must  do  something 
for  them.      I  will  wash  it  all  off  later. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     I  see,  nothing  will  come  of  it. 

First  Peasant.  How,  honourable  man,  are  we  to 
introduce  our  affair  into  action  ?  You,  your  Honour, 
intercede  for  us,  and  we  will  be  able  to  represent  grati- 
tude in  full  from  the  Commune  as  a  reward  for  the 
trouble. 

Third  Peasant.  Try,  little  falcon,  —  we  can't  get 
along  without  it.  The  land  is  small,  and  there  is  not 
room  enough  to  let  out  a  cow,  nay,  not  even  a  chick, 
let  me  say.     (Bows.) 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  am  sorry  for  you,  friends,  but  I  do 
not  know  how  to  do  it.  I  understand  it  all  very  well,  — 
but  he  has  refused.  How  is  it  to  be  done  now  ?  And 
the  lady  does  not  consent,  either.  Hardly  !  Well,  let  me 
have  the  paper,  —  I  will  go  and  try.  I  will  ask  him. 
(Uxit.) 

Scene  LIII.      Tanya  and  the  three  peasants  (sighing). 

Tanya.     Uncles,  tell  me  what  the  matter  now  is. 

First  Peasant.  If  only  we  could  get  the  signature  of 
the  application  of  his  hand  ! 

Tanya.     You  want  the  master  to  sign  the  paper,  yes  ? 

First  Peasant.  We  want  him  to  apply  his  hand  to 
the  paper,  and  take  the  money,  —  and  that  would  be  the 
solution. 

Third  Peasant.  If  he  only  wrote  down :  "  As  the 
peasants  wish,  let  me  say,  so,  let  me  say,  I,  too,  wish." 
And  that  would  be  all :  he  would  sign  it,  and  —  the  end 
of  it. 

Tanya.  Only  to  sign  it  ?  All  you  want  is  for  the 
master  to  sign  ?     (In  thought.) 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  the  whole  affair  depends 
on  it :  he  signs,  so  to  speak,  and  no  more  of  it. 


THE    FRUITS    OP'    ENLIGHTENMENT  225 

Tanya.  Wait  and  let  us  hear  what  F^dor  Ivanych  has 
to  say.     If  he  cannot  persuade  him,  I  will  try  a  trick. 

First  Peasant.     You  will  trick  him  ? 

Tanya.     I  will  tiy. 

Third  Peasant.  Oh,  the  girl  wants  to  intercede  for 
us  ?  You  get  our  request  granted,  and,  let  me  say,  we 
will  agree  to  take  care  of  you  at  the  Commune's  charge. 
That's  it. 

First  Peasant.  If  this  aftair  will  be  introduced  into 
action,  in  rivahty,  we  can  pay  you  with  gold. 

Second  Peasant.     Of  course  ! 

Tanya.  I  can't  promise  for  sure.  As  the  proverb 
says  :  a  trial  is  no  joke,  and  — 

First  Peasant.  And  a  request  is  no  misfortune. 
That  is  so  in  rivality. 

Scene  LIV.     The  same  and  FMor  Ivanych. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  No,  my  friends,  you  will  not  succeed. 
He  does  not  consent,  and  he  will  not.  Take  your  paper ! 
Go,  go ! 

First  Peasant  (tahes  the  paper  to  Tanya).  So,  for 
example,  we  will  be  relaying  on  you. 

Tanya.  In  a  minute,  in  a  minute.  Go  and  wait  in 
the  street  for  me !  I  will  be  there  at  once,  and  I  will 
tell  you  something.     {Peasants  exeunt.) 

Scene  LV.     F^dor  Ivanych  and  Tanya. 

Tanya.  F6dor  Ivanych,  my  dear,  please  ask  the  mas- 
ter to  come  out  for  a  minute.  I  have  to  tell  him  a  word 
or  two. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  news  is  this  ? 

Tanya.  It  is  important,  Fedor  Ivanych.  Ask  him, 
F^dor  Ivanych !  There  is  nothing  bad  about  it,  upon  my 
word ! 


226  THE    FKUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Fedor  Ivanych  (smiling).  I  can't  understand  what 
you  are  up  to !     Yes,  I  will  tell  him,  I  will.     {Exit.) 

Scene  LVI.     Tanya  {alone). 

Tanya.  Keally,  I  will  do  it.  He  said  himself  that 
there  is  a  power  in  Sem^n,  and  I  know  how  to  do  it  all. 
Nobody  caught  on  then.  Now  I  will  teach  Sem^n  how 
to  do  it.  And  if  it  does  not  succeed,  there  will  be  no  sin 
in  doing  it.     There  is  no  sin  in  doing  it. 

Scene  LVII.    Tanya,  Leonid  F(^dorovich/(9Z^ow?ec?%r^dor 

Ivanych. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {smiling).  So  you  have  a  request 
to  make !     What  kind  of  an  affair  have  you  ? 

Tanya.  A  little  secret,  Leonid  Fedorovich.  Permit 
me  to  tell  it  to  you  in  private. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Indeed !  F^dor,  go  out  for  a 
minute ! 

Scene  LVIII.     Leonid  Fedorovich  and  Tanya. 

Tanya.  As  I  have  been  living  in  your  house,  Leonid 
Fedorovich,  and  have  grown  up  here,  and  as  I  am  grate- 
ful to  you  for  so  much,  I  will  tell  you  everything,  as  if  you 
were  my  own  father.  Semen,  who  is  liviug  in  your  house, 
wants  to  marry  me. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Indeed  ? 

Tanya.  I  will  tell  you  everything,  as  before  God.  I 
am  an  orphan,  and  I  have  no  one  to  consult  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Why  not  ?  He  seems  to  be  a 
nice  fellow. 

Tanya.  Yes,  he  is.  That  would  be  all  right,  but  I 
have  fears  about  one  thing.  I  should  like  to  ask  you 
about  this  matter :  there  is  something  about  him  which  I 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     227 

cannot  understand,  and  I  am  afraid  it  might  be  something 
bad. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     What  is  it  ?     He  drinks  ? 

Tanya.  No,  God  forfend  !  But  as  I  know  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  spirituality  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     You  do  ? 

Tanya.  Of  course  I  do !  I  understand  it  very  well. 
Others,  being  ignorant,  do  not  understand  it  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Well,  what  of  it  ? 

Tanya.  I  have  my  fears  about  Sem^n.  Such  things 
happen  with  him. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     What  things  ? 

Tanya.  Something  like  spirituahty.  You  ask  the 
servants !  The  moment  he  falls  asleep  at  the  table  the 
table  begins  to  shake  ;  it  begins  to  creak  hke  this :  tick, 
ti-tick  !     All  the  people  have  heard  it. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  That's  precisely  what  I  told  Ser- 
gy^y  Ivanovich  this  morning.     Well  ? 

Tanya.  So  —  when  was  it  ?  Oh,  yes,  on  Wednesday. 
We  sat  down  to  dinner.  No  sooner  did  he  sit  down  than 
the  spoon  came  right  into  his  hand,  —  it  just  jumped  into 
his  hand. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Ah,  this  is  interesting  !  It  just 
jumped  into  his  hand  ?     Well,  did  he  fall  asleep  ? 

Tanya.     I  did  not  notice.     I  think  he  did. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Well  ? 

Tanya.  Well,  I  am  afraid  there  might  be  some  harm 
from  it,  and  so  I  wanted  to  ask  you  about  it.  I  did  not 
know  whether  I  could  risk  it  to  live  with  him,  because  he 
has  such  a  thing. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {smiling).  No,  don't  be  afraid : 
there  is  no  harm  from  it.  This  only  means  that  he  is 
a  medium,  simply  a  medium.  I  knew  before  that  he  was 
a  medium. 

Tanya.     That's  all.     I  was  so  afraid  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  '  No,  don't  be  afraid,  it  won't  hurt. 


228     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

(Aside.)  That  is  nice.  Kapchich  can't  be  here  to-day,  so 
we  will  test  him  —  No,  my  dear,  don't  be  afraid,  he  will 
make  you  a  good  husband,  and  all  that.  This  is  a  special 
power  which  is  in  everybody,  —  only  weaker  in  some,  and 
stronger  in  others. 

Tanya.  A^ery  much  obhged  to  you.  I  sha'n't  give  it 
any  thought  now.  But  before,  I  was  afraid.  This  comes 
from  our  ignorance ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     No,  no,  don't  be  afraid  !  F6doT  ! 

Scene  LIX.     The  same  and  F6doT  Ivanych. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  I  am  going  away.  Have  every- 
thing ready  for  the  seance  this  evening ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.     But  Kapchich  cannot  be  here. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  That  does  not  matter.  We  will 
have  it  all  the  same.  (Puts  on  his  overcoat.)  There  will 
be  a  trial  s(^ance  with  our  own  medium.  (Exit.  Fedor 
Ivanych  sees  him  off.) 

Scene  LX.     Tanya  (alone). 

Tanya.  He  believed  me,  he  believed  me !  (Squeaks 
and  leaps  about.)  Upon  my  word,  he  believed  me ! 
What  a  wonder  !  (Squeaks.)  I  will  do  it  now,  if  only 
Sem^n  is  not  shy. 

Scene  LXI.     Tanya  and  F^dor  Ivanych  (returning). 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  have  you  told  him  your 
secret  ? 

Tanya.  I  have.  I  will  tell  it  to  you,  too,  only  later. 
I  have  a  request  to  make  of  you,  F^dor  Ivanych. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  request  is  it  ? 

Tanya  (abashed).  You  have  been  like  a  second  father 
to  me,  and  so  I  will  tell  you  everything,  as  before  God. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     229 

Fedor  Ivanycii.  Don't  beat  around  the  bush,  but 
talk  business ! 

Tanya.  Business  ?  Well,  the  business  is  that  Sem^u 
wants  to  marry  me. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Indeed.  I  thought  I  noticed  some- 
thing. 

Tanya.  Why  should  I  conceal  it  ?  I  am  an  orphan, 
and  you  know  yourself  how  it  is  here  in  the  city :  every- 
body annoys  me  with  his  attentions.  Take,  for  example, 
Grigori  Mikhaylych.  He  gives  me  no  peace.  They  all 
think  that  I  have  no  soul,  that  I  am  intended  for  a  toy 
for  them  — 

Fedor  Ivanych.  You  are  clever,  —  I  like  that !  Well, 
what  of  it  ? 

Tanya.  Sem^n  wrote  to  his  father,  and  when  his 
father  saw  me  to-day,  he  said  that  his  son  was  spoilt  — 
Fedor  Ivanych  !  {Bows.)  Be  in  place  of  my  father,  and 
speak  with  the  old  man,  with  Semen's  father.  I  will 
take  them  to  the  kitchen,  if  vou  will  come  there  and  talk 
with  the  old  man. 

Fedor  Ivanych  (smiling).  Oh,  you  mean  to  have  me 
for  a  match-maker  ?     I  do  not  object. 

Tanya.  Dear  Fedor  Ivanych,  be  in  place  of  my  father, 
and  I  will  all  my  life  pray  to  God  for  you. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  All  right,  all  right,  I  will  be  there. 
I  will  do  as  I  promise.    {Takes  the  newspaper.) 

Tanya.     Be  my  second  father  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.     All  right,  all  right ! 

Tanya.     Then  I  will  hope.     (Exit.) 

Scene  LXII.     FMor  Ivanych  (alone.    Sliahing  his  head). 

Fedor  Ivanych.  She  is  a  good,  kindly  girl.  When 
you  think  of  it,  how  many  of  them  get  ruined !  Let 
them  make  one  false  step,  and  down  they  go.  Then  you 
can't  pick  them  out  from  the  mire.     Take,  for  example, 


230     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

dear  Natalya.  She  was  a  nice  girl,  and  a  mother  had 
borne  and  brought  her  up  —  [Takes  his  paper.)  Well, 
Ferdinand,  how  is  she  getting  on  ? 

Curtain. 


ACT   11. 

The  scene  represents  the  interior  of  the  servants'  kitchen. 
The  peasants,  having  taken  off  their  wra.ps,  are  seated 
at  the  table  and,  perspiring,  are  drinking  tea.  Fedor 
Ivdnych,  with  a  cigar,  at  the  other  end  of  the  stage. 
On  the  oven  is  the  old  cook,  not  visible  during  the 
first  four  scenes. 

Scene    I.     Three  peasants  and  F^dor  Ivanych. 

Fedoe  Ivaxych.  My  advice  is  for  you  not  to  inter- 
fere with  him.  If  he  wants  it,  and  she  wants  it,  may 
God  help  them !  She  is  a  good  girl.  Don't  pay  any 
attention  to  her  being  so  dressed  up !  This  is  city  style, 
—  she  can't  help  it !     She  is  a  clever  girl. 

Second  Peasant.  Well,  if  he  wants  her,  let  him ! 
It  is  not  I  who  will  live  with  her,  but  he.  Only  she 
looks  too  clean.  How  can  we  take  her  to  the  hut  ?  She 
won't  even  let  her  mother-in-law  pat  her. 

Fedoe  Ivanych.  My  friend,  it  does  not  depend  upon 
the  cleanliness,  but  on  the  character.  If  she  has  a  good 
character,  she  will  be  submissive  and  respectful. 

Second  Peasant.  I  will  take  her  if  the  lad  has  set 
his  heart  upon  her.  Of  course,  it  is  bad  to  live  with 
one  you  do  not  love !  I  will  take  counsel  with  the  old 
woman,  and  God  aid  them ! 

Fedoe  Ivanych.     Agreed  ? 

Second  Peasant.     I  suppose  so. 

FiEST  Peasant.     How  it  fortunes  you,  Zakh^r:  you 

have  come  for  the  accomplishment  of  business,  and  he- 

231 


232     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

hold,  what  a  queen  of  a  girl  you  have  gotten  for  a  wife 
for  your  son.  Now  you  ought  to  set  up  the  drinks,  to  do 
it  according  to  property. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  That  is  entirely  unnecessary.  (An 
awkward  silence.) 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  understand  your  peasant  life  quite 
well.  I  must  tell  you,  I  am  myself  considering  about  some 
land  somewhere.  I  should  like  to  build  me  a  little  house, 
and  take  to  farming.     I  would  not  mind  out  your  way. 

Second  Peasant.     It  is  a  very  good  thing  ! 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  with  money  you  can 
receive  all  kinds  of  pleasures  in  the  village. 

Third  Peasant.  I  should  say  so !  The  life  in  the 
country,  let  me  say,  is  in  any  case  freer  than  in  the  city. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  will  you  take  me  into  your 
Commune,  if  I  should  settle  in  your  village  ? 

Second  Peasant.  Why  not  ?  You  will  treat  the  old 
men  to  liquor,  and  they  will  take  you  at  once. 

First  Peasant.  You  will  open  a  wine  establishment, 
for  example,  or  an  inn,  and  you  will  live  such  a  life  that 
you  won't  have  to  die.     You  will  lord  it,  and  nothing  more. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  We  will  see  about  that  later.  All 
I  want  is  to  live  out  my  days  in  peace.  I  live  comfort- 
ably here,  and  I  should  hate  to  leave  the  place :  Leonid 
F^dorovich  is  a  man  of  rare  kindness. 

First  Peasant.  This  is  so  in  rivality.  But  how  is  it 
about  our  affair  ?    Will  it  really  be  without  consequences  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     He  would  like  to  help  you. 

Second  Peasant.     Evidently  he  is  afraid  of  his  wife. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     He  is   not  afraid,  but  there  is  no 


agreement. 


Third  Peasant.  You  ought  to  try  for  us,  father,  for 
how  can  we  get  along  without  it  ?     The  land  is  small  — 

Fedor  Ivanych.  We  will  see  what  will  come  of 
Tatyana's  attempt.     She  has  undertaken  to  help  you. 

Third  Peasant  (drinking  tea).     Father,  take  pity  on 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  233 

US  !  The  laud  is  small,  there  is  not  enough  room  to  drive 
out  a  cow,  nay,  not  even  a  chick. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  The  affair  is  not  in  my  hands.  {To 
the  Second  Peasant.)  Well,  well,  friend,  so  we  are  the 
match-makers  !     Tanya's  affair  is  settled,  is  it  not  ? 

Second  Peasant.  I  have  told  you,  and  I  will  not 
back  out,  even  without  the  drinks.  If  only  our  affair 
came  out  right ! 

Scene  II.  The  same.  Enter  Woman  Cook.  She  looks 
into  the  stove,  makes  signs  into  that  direction,  and  im- 
mediately hegins  to  speak  with  animation  to  F^dor 
Ivanych. 

Cook.  They  have  just  called  Sem^n  away  from  the 
family  kitchen,  and  have  taken  him  up-stairs ;  the  master 
and  the  other  fellow,  the  one  that  is  bald  and  who  makes 
them  come,  have  put  him  down  in  a  chair  and  have 
ordered  liim  to  act  in  Kapchich's  place. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  nonsense  ! 

Cook.  It  is  the  truth  !  Yakov  has  just  told  Tanya 
about  it. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     This  is  wonderful ! 

Scene  III.     The  same  and  Coachman. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  do  you  want  ? 

Coachman  {to  Fedor  Ivanych).  Do  tell  them  that  I 
was  not  hired  to  live  with  dogs.  Let  anybody  else 
live  who  wants  to,  but  I  am  not  willing. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     With  what  do^s  ? 

Coachman.  They  brought  three  dogs  from  Vasili 
Leonidych  to  the  coachman's  room.  They  have  dirtied  it, 
and  they  howl,  and  you  can't  get  near  them,  for  they  bite. 
They  are  angry  devils,  and  they  will  eat  me  up  if  I  do 
not  look  out.     I  feel  like  breaking  their  legs  with  a  stick. 


234  THE   FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Fedor  Ivanych.     When  was  that  done  ? 

Coachman.  They  brought  them  to-day  from  the  expo- 
sition :  they  are  expensive  beasts :  pout-bodied  they  call 
them,  or  some  such  name,  —  the  devil  take  them  !  Either 
the  dogs  or  the  coachmen  stay  in  the  coachman's  room. 
You  tell  them  so  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Yes,  that  is  improper.  I  will  go  and 
ask  about  it. 

Coachman.  They  ought  to  be  here.  I  suppose  Lu- 
k^rya  would  hke  to  have  them. 

Cook  {excitedly).  People  eat  here,  and  you  want  to 
shut  up  dogs.     As  it  is  — 

Coachman.  But  I  have  caftans,  rugs,  harness.  And 
they  demand  that  it  be  clean.  Well,  take  them  to  the 
servants'  room. 

Fedok  Ivanych.    I  must  tell  VasiH  Leonidych  about  it. 

Coachman  {angrily).  Let  him  hang  the  dogs  around 
his  neck,  and  walk  around  with  them !  Anyway,  he 
likes  too  nmch  to  ride  around  :  he  has  spoilt  Beauty  for 
nothing.  It  was  such  a  fine  horse !  What  a  life  !  (Exit, 
slamming  the  duor.) 

Scene  IV.     The  same  without  Coachman. 

Fedor  Ivanych.      Yes,    disorder,   disorder!      [To    the 

peasants.)     Well,  in  the  meantime,  good-bye,  good  people  ! 

Peasants.     God  be  with  you  !     (Fedor  Ivanych  exit.) 

Scene  V.     The  same,  without  F^dor  Ivanych. 
{The  moment  Fedor  Ivanych  has  left,  groans  are  heard  on 

the  oven.) 

Second  Peasant.     He  is  as  smooth  as  a  general. 

Cook.  What  is  the  use  of  talking  ?  He  has  a  sepa- 
rate room  ;  he  gets  his  linen  from  the  masters  ;  sugar,  tea, 
—  all  from  the  masters,  and  the  food  is  from  the  table. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     235 

Old  Cook.  How  can  the  devil  help  living  when  he 
has  swiped  a  lot. 

Second  Peasant.  Who  is  the  man  there  on  the 
oven  ? 

Cook.     Oh,  just  a  man.     {Silence.) 

FiKST  Peasant.  Well,  I  saw  you  lately  eating  sup- 
per, and  it  was  a  mighty  good  capital. 

Cook.  We  can't  complain.  She  is  not  stingy  on  that. 
White  bread  on  Sundays,  fish  on  hoUday  fasts,  and  if  you 
want  to,  you  may  eat  meat. 

Second  Peasant.     Do  they  not  keep  the  fasts  ? 

Cook.  Hardly  one  of  them  does.  The  only  ones  who 
keep  the  fasts  are  the  coachman  (not  the  one  that  was 
here,  but  an  old  fellow),  and  Sem^n,  and  I,  and  the  house- 
keeper ;  the  rest  chew  meat. 

Second  Peasant.     Well,  and  he  himself  ? 

Cook.  What  are  you  about  ?  He  has  even  forgotten 
what  a  fast  means. 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

First  Peasant.  That  is  the  gentlemen's  way,  —  they 
have  come  to  it  from  books,  because  it  is  intelligent- 
ness ! 

Third  Peasant.     Bolted  bread  every  day,  I  suppose  ? 

Cook.  Oh,  bolted  bread !  They  don't  know  what 
your  bolted  bread  is !  You  ought  to  see  their  food  ! 
What  do  they  not  have  ? 

First  Peasant.  The  gentlemen's  food,  naturally,  is 
airlike. 

Cook.  That's  it,  airlike,  and  they  are  great  hands  at 
chewing. 

First  Peasant.  That  means  that  they  have  appekites, 
so  to  speak. 

Cook.  And  so  they  wash  it  down.  All  those  sweet 
wines,  brandy,  frothing  liquors,  at  every  course  a  different 
one.  They  eat  and  wash  it  down,  they  eat  and  wash  it 
down. 


23 C  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

First  Peasant.  That,  so  to  speak,  carries  the  food 
into  the  preportiou. 

Cook.  They  are  great  hands  at  chewing,  —  it  is  just 
terrible  !  They  don't  know  anything  about  sitting  down, 
eating,  crossing  themselves,  and  getting  up.  No,  they  eat 
without  stopping. 

Second  Peasant.  Like  pigs,  with  their  feet  in  the 
trough.     {Peasants  laugh.) 

Cook.  God  bless  them,  the  moment  they  open  their 
eyes  they  immediately  want  their  samovar,  their  tea, 
coffee,  or  chocolate.  No  sooner  have  they  emptied  two 
samovars  than  they  want  a  third.  Then  comes  breakfast, 
then  dinner,  then  again  coffee.  No  sooner  have  they 
rested  than  they  begin  to  drink  tea  again.  And  then 
all  the  dainties :  confectionery,  jams,  —  oh,  there  is  no 
end  to  it.     They  eat  even  while  lying  in  bed. 

Third  Peasant.     Well,  I  declare  !     (Boars.) 

First  and  Second  Peasants.  What  is  the  matter 
with  you  ? 

Third  Peasant,  I  should  hke  to  live  just  one  day 
like  that! 

Second  Peasant.     When  do  they  attend  to  business  ? 

Cook.  What  business  ?  All  the  business  they  have 
is  cards  and  the  piano.  The  moment  the  young  lady 
opens  her  eyes,  she  makes  for  the  piano,  and  begins  to 
bang.  And  the  one  that  lives  here,  the  teacher,  stands 
and  waits  for  the  piano  to  get  disengaged.  The  moment 
one  drops  off,  the  other  one  lets  herself  loose.  Some- 
times they  put  up  two  pianos,  and  two  of  them,  and  even 
four  persons,  bang  away  at  it.  They  bang  so  that  we  can 
hear  it  here. 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Cook.  That's  all  the  business  they  have :  the  piano 
and  cards.  The  moment  they  come  together,  they  begin 
playing  cards,  drinking  wine,  and  smoking,  —  and  so  it  goes 
all  night.     The  moment  they  get  up,  they  begin  to  eat ! 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     237 


Scene  VI.     The  same  and  Sem^n. 

Semen.     Tea  and  sugar  ! 

First  Peasant.     Do  us  the  favour  and  sit  down. 

Semen  {lualking  up  to  the  talk).  My  humblest  thanks  ! 
{First  Peasant  pours  out  a  glass  of  tea  for  him.) 

Second  Peasant.     Where  have  you  been  ? 

Semen.     Up-stairs. 

Second  Peasant.     What  were  you  doing  there  ? 

Semen.  I  can't  make  it  out.  I  don't  know  how  to 
tell  it. 

Second  Peasant.     What  kind  of  a  thing  was  it  ? 

Semen.  I  do  not  know  how  to  tell  it.  They  were 
testing  some  power  in  me.  I  can't  make  it  out.  Tatyana 
said  to  me :  "  Do  it,"  says  she,  "  and  we  will  get  him  to 
sell  the  land  to  our  peasants." 

Second  Peasant.     How  is  she  going  to  do  it  ? 

Semen.  I  can't  make  it  out,  for  she  does  not  tell.  All 
she  says  is  :  "  Do  as  I  tell  you  !  " 

Second  Peasant.     Do  what  ? 

Semen.  Eeally  nothing  at  all.  They  put  me  in  a 
chair,  then  they  put  out  the  lights,  and  told  me  to  sleep. 
Tatyana  was  hid  near  by.  They  did  not  see  her,  but  I 
did. 

Second  Peasant.     AVhat  was  that  for  ? 

Semen.     God  knows,  —  I  can't  make  it  out. 

First  Peasant.     Of  course,  for  pastime. 

Second  Peasant.  Evidently  you  and  I  can't  under- 
stand it.     Tell  me  :  how  much  money  have  you  spent  ? 

Semen.  Not  any.  I  hiive  saved  everything :  twenty- 
eight  roubles,  I  think. 

Second  Peasant.  That  is  good.  If  God  grants  us  to 
get  the  land,  Sem^n,  I  will  take  you  home  with  me. 

Semen.  '    That  would  please  me. 

Second  Peasant.  You  are  spoilt,  I  am  afraid.  You 
won't  like  to  do  the  ploughing. 


238  THE   FRUITS    OF   ENLIGHTENMENT 

Semen.  Ploughing  ?  I  would  do  it  this  minute. 
Mowing  and  ploughing  is  not  so  easily  forgotten. 

First  Peasant.  After  the  city  life  you  will  not,  for 
example,  have  the  patience. 

Sem]6n.     One  can  live  well  in  the  village,  too. 

First  Peasant.  Now  here  is  Uncle  Mitri,  and  he  is 
covetous  of  your  delicate  life. 

Semen.  Uncle  Mitri,  you  would  get  tired  of  it.  It 
looks  easy,  but  there  is  a  great  deal  of  ninning  about. 
One  gets  all  mixed  up. 

Cook.     Uncle  Mitri,  you  ought  just  to  see  their  balls, 

—  you  would  be  surprised  ! 

Third  Peasant.     Why,  do  they  eat  all  the  time  ? 

Cook.  No  !  You  ought  to  have  seen  it !  F^dor 
Ivanych  took  me  to  see  it.  When  I  looked,  I  got  scared. 
Oh,  how  they  were  fitted  out !  You  never  saw  the  like  ! 
Naked  down  to  here,  and  their  arms  bare. 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Second  Peasant.     Fie,  what  nastiness ! 

First  Peasant.     The  chmate,  so  to  speak,  permits  it. 

Cook.  So,  uncle,  I  looked  at  them,  and  I  saw  they 
were  all  of  them  naked.    Would  you  believe  it,  the  old  ones 

—  even  our  lady  who  has  grandchildren  —  were  bare,  too. 
Second  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Cook.  What  do  you  think  ?  Wlien  the  music  struck 
up,  and  they  began  to  play,  the  gentlemen  came  up  and 
embraced  the  ladies  and  began  to  whirl  around. 

Second  Peasant.     The  old  women,  too  ? 

Cook.     The  old  women,  too. 

Semen.     No,  the  old  women  remain  sitting. 

Cook.     What  are  you  saying  ?     I  saw  them  myself. 

Semen.     I  tell  you,  no. 

Old  Cook  {sticking  his  head  out,  in  a  hoarse  voice). 
This  is  the  polka-mazurka.  Oh,  you  fool,  you  don't  know 
anything  :   that's  the  way  they  dance  — 

Cook.     You,  dancer,  keep  quiet !    Somebody  is  coming. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     239 

Scene   VII.     The  same  and   Grigori.     {The  old  cook 
hastens  to  hide  himself.) 

Grigori  (to  the  cook).     Let  me  have  sour  cabbage ! 

Cook.  I  have  just  come  back  from  the  cellar,  and  I 
have  to  go  there  again.     Who  needs  it  ? 

Grigori.  The  young  ladies  v;^ant  sour  soup  with 
croutons.  Lively  there!  Send  it  up  with  Sem^n,  for 
I  have  no  time ! 

Cook.  They  stuff  themselves  with  sweets,  until  they 
can't  swallow  any  more,  and  then  they  want  cabbage. 

First  Peasant.     For  cleaning  out,  so  to  speak. 

Cook.  Yes,  they  make  room  for  more  stuffing  !  (Takes 
a  howl  and  exit.) 

Scene  VIII.     The  same  without  Cook. 

Grigori  (to  the  peasants).  How  comfortable  you  look 
here!  Look  out!  The  lady  will  find  it  out,  and  then 
she  will  give  you  an  overhauling  which  will  be  worse 
than  what  it  was  in  the  morning.      (Laughs  and  exit.) 

Scene  IX.     The  peasants,  Sem^n,  a7id  Old  Cook  (on  the 

oven). 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  she  did  storm  then,  —  it 
was  just  terrible ! 

Second  Peasant.  At  that  time  he  wanted  to  take 
our  part,  but  when  he  saw  that  she  was  tearing  the  roof 
down,  he  slammed  the  door,  as  much  as  to  say  :  "  All 
right,  carry  on  as  you  please ! " 

Third  Peasant  (waving  his  hand).  There  is  not 
much  difference.  Many  a  time,  let  me  say,  my  old 
woman  flames  up  terribly.  Then  I  leave  the  house.  Let 
her  carry  on  1  At  such  times  I  am  afraid  that  she  might 
hit  me  with  the  oven-fork.     0  Lord ! 


24:0  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  X.     The  same  and  Yakov  (running  in  with  a  pre- 
scription). 

Yakov.  Sem^n,  ruu  to  the  apothecary's,  lively !  Get 
these  powders  for  the  lady ! 

Semen.     But  he  told  me  not  to  leave. 

Yakov.  You  will  have  plenty  of  time.  Your  business 
begins  after  tea.     Tea  and  sugar  ! 

First  Peasant.     You  are  welcome  !     (Semen  exit.) 

Scene  XL     The  same,  witliout  Sem^n. 

Yakov.  I  have  no  time  !  Fill  up  a  cup  for  company's 
sake ! 

^'iRST  Peasant.  We  have  preposed  a  conversation 
how  that  your  lady  acted  so  proudly  in  the  morning. 

Yakov.  Oh,  she  is  dreadfully  hot!  She  is  so  hot, 
she  forgets  herself.     Sometimes  she  bursts  out  weeping. 

First  Peasant.  Here  is,  for  example,  what  I  wanted 
to  ask.  In  the  morning  she  preposed  something  about 
microtes :  "  You  have  brought  microtes,  microtes  with 
you,"  she  said.     What  is  this  microte  to  be  applied  to  ? 

Yakov.  Oh,  you  mean  the  microves.  They  say  they 
are  a  kind  of  bugs  from  which  all  diseases  come.  She 
meant  to  say  that  you  had  them  on  you.  Oh,  how  they 
washed  and  sprinkled  the  place  where  you  had  been 
standing !  There  is  a  medicine  from  which  they  all  die, 
—  I  mean  the  bugs. 

Second  Peasant.      Where  are  these  bugs  on  us  ? 

Yakov  (drinking  tea).  They  say  they  are  so  tiny,  you 
can't  see  them  even  through  glasses. 

Second  Peasant.  How  does  she  know  they  are  on 
me  ?     Maybe  there  is  more  of  that  nastiness  upon  her, 

Yakov.     Go  and  ask  them  ! 

Second  Peasant.     I  suppose  it  is  all  nonsense. 

Yakov.     Of  course,  nonsense.     But  the  doctors  have 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     241 

to  invent  something,  else  what  would  they  get  the  money 
for  ?  He  comes  to  see  us  every  day.  He  comes,  says 
something,  and  gets  ten  roubles. 

Second  Peasant.     Is  it  possible  ? 

Yakov.     There  is  one  of  them  who  gets  one  hundred. 

First  Peasant.     In  rivality,  one  hundred  ? 

Yakov.  One  hundred  !  You  say  :  one  hundred  ?  He 
takes  a  thousand,  if  he  goes  out  of  the  city.  "  Give  me  a 
thousand,"  says  he,  "  or  you  may  give  up  the  ghost ! " 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Second  Peasant.     Does  he  know  some  charm  ? 

Yakov.  I  suppose  he  does.  I  used  to  live  at  the 
house  of  a  general,  not  far  from  Moscow.  This  general  was 
such  a  high-tempered  man,  oh,  so  high-tempered !  So 
once  his  daughter  grew^  ill.  They  sent  at  once  for  this 
doctor.  "  A  thousand  roubles,  and  I  will  come."  They 
agreed  to  it,  and  he  came.  In  some  way  they  did  not 
please  the  doctor:  well,  you  ought  to  have  heard  him 
yell  out  at  the  general !  "  Ah,"  says  he,  "  so  this  is  the 
way  you  treat  me  ?  Ah,  I  will  not  cure  her ! "  Would 
you  beheve  it  ?  The  general  forgot  his  pride,  and  tried 
every  way  to  quiet  him  down.  "  Sir,  don't  abandon 
me  f" 

First  Peasant.     Did  they  give  him  the  thousand? 

Yakov.     I  should  say  they  did. 

Second  Peasant.  What  a  heap  of  money !  What  a 
peasant  could  do  with  it ! 

Third  Peasant.  But  I  think  it  is  all  nonsense.  At 
one  time  my  leg  was  sore.  I  doctored  it,  and  doctored  it, 
—  I  spent  about  five  roubles  on  doctoring.  Then  I  gave 
up  doctoring,  and  it  healed  up  by  itself.  {The  Old  Cook 
on  the  oven  coughs.) 

Yakov.     Our  friend  is  there  again  ! 

First  Peasant.     Who  is  that  man  ? 

Yakov.  He  used  to  be  our  master's  cook.  He  comes 
to  see  Luk^rya. 


242     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

First  Peasant.  Chef,  so  to  speak.  Does  he  live 
here  ? 

Yakov.  No.  He  is  not  allowed  to  stay  here.  He  is 
in  one  place  in  the  daytime,  and  in  another  in  the  night. 
If  he  has  three  kopeks,  he  stays  in  a  night  lodging-house  ; 
and  if  he  has  spent  it  on  drinks,  he  comes  here. 

Second  Peasant.     What  is  the  matter  with  him  ? 

Yakov.  He  is  weak.  What  a  man  he  used  to  be ! 
A  real  gentleman.  He  used  to  wear  a  gold  watch,  and 
received  as  high  as  forty  roubles  a  month  in  wages. 
And  now  he  would  have  starved  long  ago,  if  Luk^rya  had 
not  helped  him  out. 

Scene  XII.     The  same  and  Cook  {with  the  cabbage). 

Yakov  {to  Lukerya).  I  see,  Pavel  Petrovich  is  here 
again. 

Cook.    Wliere  shall  he  go  to  ?    Shall  he  freeze  to  death  ? 

Third  Peasant.  See  what  liquor  will  do !  The 
liquor,  let  me  say  —  {Clicks  his  tongue  in  compassion.) 

Second  Peasant.  Of  course :  if  a  man  wants  to  be 
firm,  he  is  firmer  than  rock ;  if  he  weakens,  he  is  weaker 
than  water. 

Old  Cook  {crawls  cloum  from  the  oven,  trembling  with 
his  legs  and  arms).  Lukerya,  I  say,  —  let  me  have  a 
wine-glass ! 

Cook.  Where  are  you  going  ?  I  will  let  you  have 
such  a  wine-glass  — 

Old  Cook.  For  the  love  of  God!  I  am  dying. 
Friends,  let  me  have  five  kopeks  ! 

Cook.     I  tell  you,  climb  back  on  the  oven ! 

Old  Cook.  Cook!  Half  a  glass!  For  Christ's  sake, 
I  say,  —  you  understand  ?  I  beg  you,  for  Christ's 
sake. 

Cook.     Go,  go  !     You  may  have  some  tea. 

Old  Cook.     What  tea  ?     What  is  tea  ?     A  stupid  and 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     243 

weak    drink.      Let    me    have    liquor,    only    a    swallow! 
Luk^rya  ! 

Third  Peasant.     How  the  poor  fellow  is  suffering ! 

Second  Peasant.  Had  you  not  better  let  him  have 
some? 

Cook  {goes  to  the  safe  and  pours  out  a  wine-glassftd). 
Here !     That  is  all  I  \vill  give  you  ! 

Old  Cook  (seizes  it,  and  drinks  it  ivith  trcmlling  hands). 
Luk^rya  !     Cook  !     I  drink,  but  you  must  understand  — 

Cook.  That  will  do !  Climb  on  the  oven,  and  let  me 
not  hear  a  word  from  you ! 

{Tlie  Old  Cook  submissively  climhs,  on  the  oven,  and 
continues  to  grumble  something  to  himself.) 

Second  Peasant.  Just  see  what  it  means  for  a  man 
to  weaken ! 

FmsT  Peasant.    In  rivality,  what  is  human  weakness  ? 

Third  Peasant.  What  is  the  use  of  mentioning  it  ? 
{TJie  Old  Cook  lies  down,  continuing  to  grumble.     Silence.) 

Second  Peasant.  I  wanted  to  ask  you :  there  is  a 
girl  from  our  village,  Aksinya's  daughter,  living  here ; 
well,  —  how  is  she  ?     Is  she  a  good  girl,  so  to  speak  ? 

Yakov.     Yes,  she  is,  —  I  may  honestly  say  so. 

Cook.  Let  me  tell  you  truthfully,  uncle,  for  I  know 
the  conditions  here  pretty  well,  —  if  you  want  to  marry 
your  sou  to  her,  take  her  away  at  once,  before  she  has  a 
chance  to  get  spoilt,  —  or  else  it  is  bound  to  happen. 

Yakov.  That  is  so.  For  example,  last  year  there 
was  a  girl,  Natalya  by  name,  living  in  our  house.  She 
was  a  nice  girl.  She  was  completely  ruined,  just  hke 
this  fellow.     {Points  to  the  Old  Cook.) 

Cook.  A  whole  lot  of  us  women  go  to  ruin  here. 
They  all  hanker  for  hght  work  and  sweet  food.  Behold, 
before  they  know  it,  the  sweet  food  leads  them  astray, 
and  when  they  are  led  astray,  nobody  wants  them. 
They  are  at  once  sent  away,  and  fresh  ones  take  their 
place.     Just   so   it   happened    with    poor    Natalya:   she 


244  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

went  wrong,  and  so  she  was  immediately  sent  away. 
She  had  a  child,  then  grew  ill,  and  last  spring  she  died 
in  the  hospital.     What  a  fine  girl  she  was  ! 

Thikd  Peasant.  0  Lord !  They  are  weak  creatures, 
and  ought  to  be  pitied. 

Old  Cook.  Yes,  you  wait  for  the  devils  to  pity  them ! 
{Dangles  his  legs  over  the  oven.)  I  had  been  roasting  at 
the  stove  for  thirty  years.  When  I  became  useless  to 
them,  they  left  me  to  die  like  a  dog.  Yes,  they  will  pity 
a  soul ! 

First  Peasant.  This,  in  rivahty,  is  a  well-known  siti- 
vation. 

Second  Peasant.  While  eating  and  drinking  they 
call  you  curly-head ;  through  eating  and  drinking,  good- 
bye, scald-head ! 

Third  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Old  Cook.  You  don't  know  much.  What  means 
saute  tt  la  Beaumont '^  What  means  havasaril  That's 
what  I  was  able  to  do !  Think  of  it !  The  emperor  used 
to  eat  my  dishes.  And  now  I  am  of  no  use  to  the  devils. 
But  I  will  not  submit ! 

Cook.  Don't  talk  so  much  !  Look  out !  Crawl  back 
into  your  corner  so  that  you  can't  be  seen,  or  else  F^dor 
Ivanych  will  come  in,  or  somebody  else,  and  then  they 
will  drive  me  away  with  you. 

{Silence^ 

Yakov.     Do  you  know  my  village,  Voznes^nskoe 

Second  Peasant.  Certainly  I  do.  It  is  about  seven- 
teen versts,  not  more  than  that,  from  us,  and  by  cross- 
roads it  is  even  less.     Do  you  have  any  land  there  ? 

Yakov.  My  brother  has,  and  I  send  him  money. 
Although  I  am  staying  here,  I  am  dying  to  be  at  home. 

First  Peasant.     In  rivality  ! 

Second  Peasant.     Anisim,  then,  is  your  brother  ? 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  245 

Yakov.     Yes,  he  !     At  the  farther  end. 
Second  Peasant.     I  know,  the  tMrcl  farm. 

Scene   XIII.     The  same  and  Tanya  {running  in). 

Tanya.  Yakov  Ivanych !  Don't  take  it  easy  here ! 
She  is  caUing ! 

Yakov.     I  am  coming.     Wiiat  is  up  ? 

Tanya.  Fifi  is  barking  and  wants  to  eat.  She  is 
scolding  you.  "  What  a  bad  man  he  is,"  she  says.  "  He 
has  no  pity  at  all,"  says  she.  "  It  wants  to  eat,  aud  he 
does  not  bring  anything  ! "     {Laughs.) 

Yakov  {about  to  go).  Oh,  she  is  angry  ?  I  hope  there 
won't  be  anything  bad  ' 

Cook  {to  Yakov).     Take  the  cabbage  along  ! 

Yakov.    Let  me  have  it !    {Takes  the  cabbage,  and  exit.) 

Scene  XIV.     The  same,  without  Yakov. 

First  Peasant.     Who  is  going  to  dine  now  ? 

Tanya.  The  dog.  That  is  her  dog.  {Sits  down  and 
takes  hold  of  the  teapot.)  Have  you  any  tea  ?  I  have 
brought  some  more.    {Pours  it  in.) 

Second  Peasant.     Dinner  for  a  dog  ? 

Tanya.  Why,  of  course !  They  prepare  a  special 
cutlet  for  the  dog,  one  that  is  not  too  fat.  I  wash  the 
dog's  linen. 

Thikd  Peasant.     0  Lord  ! 

Tanya.     Like  that  gentleman  who  buried  his  dog. 

Second  Peasant.     What  about  him  ? 

Tanya.  A  man  was  telling  that  a  gentleman's  dog 
had  died.  It  was  in  winter,  and  he  drove  out  to  bury 
him.  He  buried  him,  and  he  drove  back  again,  and  kept 
weeping.  It  was  a  biting  frost,  and  the  coachman's  nose 
was  running  all  the  time,  and  he  wiped  it  off —  Let 
me  fill  you  the  glass.     {Fills  the  glass.)     His  nose  ran, 


246     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

and  he  kept  wiping  it.  His  master  saw  it,  and  says  he : 
"  What  is  it  ?  What  makes  you  weep  ?  "  And  the  coach- 
man said :  "  How  can  I  help  weeping  when  I  think  of 
the  dog  ? "     (^Laughs.) 

Second  Peasant.  And,  I  suppose,  he  was  all  the 
time  thinking :  "  I  would  not  weep  even  if  you  gave  up 
the  ghost."     (Laughs.) 

Old  Cook  {on  the  oven).  That  is  correct !  That  is 
so ! 

Tanya.  Very  well.  The  uiaster  came  home,  and  says 
he  to  the  lady  :  "  What  a  kind  man  our  coachman  is ! 
He  has  been  crying  all  the  way  home  :  he  is  so  sorry 
for  my  dog.  Call  him  in !  Here,  take  some  brandy ! 
And  here  is  a  rouble  as  a  reward  ! "  And  just  so  she 
carries  on,  because  Yakov  does  not  take  care  of  her  dog. 

{Peasants  roar) 

First  Peasant.     As  is  properly  ! 

SECOND  Peasant.     Well,  I  declare ! 

Third  Peasant,  0  girl,  you  have  given  us  some 
fun! 

Tanya  {pouring  out  more  tea).  Drink  some  more ! 
And  so,  although  you  may  think  we  are  having  a  good 
time,  it  makes  me  sick  to  clean  up  all  their  nastiness. 
Pshaw  !     It  is  better  in  the  village. 

{Tlie  peasants  turn  their  cups  upside  down.) 

Tanya  (filling  them).  Drink,  and  may  it  give  you 
health  !  Efim  Antonych  !  Let  me  pour  you  out  another 
glass,  Mitri  Vlasevich ! 

Third  Peasant.     Well,  fill  it,  fill  it ! 

First  Peasant.  Well,  how  does  our  affair  originate, 
clever  girl  ? 

Tanya.     All  right,  it  is  progressing  — 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     247 

First  Peasant.     Sem^n  said  — 

Tanya  (rapidli/).     He  said  ? 

Second  Peasant.     But  I  can't  make  him  out. 

Tanya.  I  can't  tell  you  now,  but  I  will  try,  I  will. 
Here  is  your  document !  (Points  to  the  document  under 
her  apron.)  If  just  one  thing  goes  right !  {Squeaks.)  Oh, 
how  good  it  would  be ! 

Second  Peasant.  Lcok  out  and  don't  lose  the  paper. 
It  has  cost  us  a  little  something. 

Tanya.  Have  no  fear  !  All  you  want  is  for  him  to 
sign  it  ? 

Third  Peasant.  What  else  ?  If  he  has  signed  it,  let 
me  say,  that  is  the  end  of  it !  [Turns  his  cup  u2Jside 
down.)     That  will  do. 

Tanya  (aside).  He  will  sign  it.  You  will  see,  he 
will.     Drink  some  more  !     (Fills  the  glass.) 

First  Peasant.  You  just  fix  the  accomplishment  of 
the  sale  of  the  land,  and  we  will  get  you  married  at  the 
Commune's  expense.     (He/uses  the  tea.) 

Tanya  (filing  a  glass  and  handing  it).     Drink  ! 

Third  Peasant.  Do  it,  and  we  will  get  you  married, 
and,  let  me  say,  we  will  dance  at  your  wedding.  Although 
I  have  never  danced  in  all  my  hfe,  I  will  then. 

Tanya  (laughing).     I  shall  expect  that.     (Silence.) 

Second  Peasant  (examining  Tanya).  All  right,  but 
you  are  not  good  for  peasant  work. 

Tanya.  Who,  I  ?  You  think  I  am  not  strong  enough  ? 
You  ought  to  see  me  pull  in  the  lady.  Many  a  peasant 
could  not  pull  her  in  that  way. 

Second  Peasant.     Where  do  you  pull  her  in  ? 

Tanya.  It  is  made  of  bone,  like  a  jacket,  as  high  as 
this.  It  is  laced  with  cords,  and  you  have  to  pull  it  in, 
just  as  people  spit  in  their  hands  and  hitch  up. 

Second  Peasant.     That  is,  you  pull  in  the^  girth  ? 

Tanya.  Yes,  yes,  I  pull  in  the  girth.  But  I  dare  not 
put  my  foot  on  her.     (Laughing.) 


248  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Second  Peasant.     Why  do  you  pull  her  in  ? 

Tanya.     Because. 

Second  Peasant.     Has  she  made  such  a  vow  ? 

Tanya.     No,  for  beauty's  sake. 

First  Peasant.  That  is,  you  lace  her  belly  for  form's 
sake. 

Tanya,  I  pull  her  in  so  that  her  eyes  all  bulge  out, 
but  she  says  :  "  More  !  "  It  makes  both  my  hands  smart, 
and  you  say  I  have  no  strength.  {Tlic  'peasants  laugh  and 
shake  their  heads.) 

Tanya.  I  have  chatted  too  long.  {Runs  away, 
laughing.) 

Third  Peasant.     How  the  girl  has  amused  us ! 

First  Peasant.     How  accurate  she  is  ! 

Second  Peasant.     She  is  all  right. 

Scene  XV.  Tliree  peasants.  Cook,  Old  Cook  (on  the 
oven).  Enter  Sakhatov  and  Vasili  Leonidych. 
Sakhatov  has  a  teaspoon  in  his  hand. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Not  exactly  a  dinner,  but  a 
dejeuner  dinatoirc.  It  was  a  fine  breakfast,  let  me  tell 
you  !  The  ham  was  glorious  !  Roulier  feeds  you  nicely. 
I  have  just  come  back.  {Seeing  the  peasants.)  The  peas- 
ants are  again  here  ? 

Sakhatov.  Yes,  yes,  that  is  all  very  beautiful,  but  we 
have  come  to  conceal  an  object.  So,  where  had  we  better 
put  it  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Pardon  me,  I  will  at  once  — 
( To  the  Cook.)     Where  are  the  dogs  ? 

Cook.  The  dogs  are  in  the  coachman's  room.  How 
could  we  keep  them  in  the  servants'  room  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Ah,  in  the  coachman's  room  ? 
Very  well. 

Sakhatov.     I  am  waiting. 

Vasili  Leonidych.    Pardon,  pardon.    Ah,  what  ?    Con- 


■3 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  249 

ceal  it  ?  Yes,  Sergy(5y  Ivanovich,  so  let  me  tell  you :  let 
us  put  it  into  the  pocket  of  one  of  these  peasants.  Into 
this  fellow's  pocket.  Say  !  Ah,  what  ?  Where  is  your 
pocket  ? 

Third  Peasant.  What  do  you  want  with  my  pocket  ? 
I  declare,  my  pocket !    I  have  money  in  my  pocket. 

Vasili  Leoxidych.     Well,  and  where  is  your  purse  ? 

Third  Peasant.     What  do  you  want  with  it  ? 

Cook.  What  are  you  doing  ?  This  is  the  young 
master. 

Vasili  Leoxidych  (laugMng).  Do  you  know  why  he 
is  so  frightened  ?  I  will  tell  you  why :  he  has  a  lot  of 
money.     Ah,  what  ? 

Sakhatov.  Yes,  yes,  I  understand.  You  talk  wdth 
them,  and  in  the  meantime  I  will  put  it  into  this  wallet, 
so  that  they  shall  not  know  anything  and  shall  not  be 
able  to  tell  him.     You  talk  with  them. 

Vasili  Leoxidych.  At  once,  at  once.  Well,  boys,  are 
you  going  to  buy  the  land  ?    Ah,  what  ? 

First  Peasant.  We  have  preposed  so  with  all  our 
hearts.  But  somehow  the  affair  does  not  originate  into 
motion. 

Vasili  Leoxidych.  Don't  be  stingy !  The  land  is  an 
important  matter.  I  told  you  to  sow  mint.  You  might 
plant  tobacco,  too. 

First  Peasant.  This  is  so,  in  rivality.  We  can  sow 
all  kinds  of  produces. 

Third  Peasaxt.  Good  sir,  can't  vou  ask  vour  father 
for  us  ?  Else  how  are  we  to  live  ?  Our  land  is  small : 
there  is  not  enough  room,  let  me  say,  to  drive  out  a  cow, 
nay,  not  even  a  chick, 

Sakhatov  {having  placed  the  spoon  in  the  wallet  of 
the  Third  Peasant).  C'est  fait.  Eeady.  Let  us  go ! 
(Exit.) 

Vasili  Leoxidych.  Don't  be  stingy,  ah?  Well, 
good-bye !     {Exit.) 


250     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  XVI.     Three  peasants,  Cook,  aiid  Old  Cook  {on 

the  oven). 

Third  Peasant.  I  told  you,  we  ought  to  have  gone 
to  the  lodging.  We  should  have  paid  a  dime  each,  and 
would  have  had  our  peace ;  but  God  save  us  from  what 
they  are  doing  here.  "  Give  me  the  money,"  says  he. 
"What  is  this  for?" 

Second  Peasant.  He  must  have  drunk  a  little  too 
much.  {Tlie  peasants  turn  over  their  cups,  get  up,  and 
cross  themselves.) 

First  Peasant.  Don't  forget  the  words  he  has  cast 
about  sowing  mint !     You  must  understand  this  ! 

Second  Peasant.  Yes,  sow  mint !  You  try  and  bend 
your  back,  and  you  won't  ask  for  any  mint,  I  am  sure ! 
Thank  you  !  Well,  clever  woman,  where  shall  we  lie 
down  ? 

Cook.  One  of  you  can  lie  down  on  the  oven,  and  the 
other  two  on  the  benches. 

Third  Peasant.     Christ  save  us  !    (Prays.) 

First  Peasant.  If  God  should  give  us  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  affair  {lying  doivn),  we  could  slide  down  on 
the  train  to-morrow,  and  on  Tuesday  we  should  be  at  home. 

Second  Peasant.    Will  you  put  out  the  light  ? 

Cook.  Indeed  not !  They  will  be  running  in  all  the 
time :  now  for  one  thing,  now  for  another.  Lie  down, 
and  I  will  turn  down  the  light. 

Second  Peasant.  How  can  one  live  on  a  small  plot  ? 
I  have  been  buying  grain  ever  since  Christmas.  The  oat 
straw  is  giving  out,  too.  If  I  could,  I  should  get  four 
desyatinas,  and  would  take  Sem^n  home. 

First  Peasant.  You  have  a  family.  You  will  have 
no  trouble  looking  after  the  land,  if  you  get  it.  If  only 
the  affair  were  accomplished. 

Third  Peasant.  We  must  ask  the  Queen  of  Heaven. 
Maybe  She  will  take  pity  on  us. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  251 

Scene  XVII.  Silence.  Sighs.  Then  are  heard  the 
thud  of  footsteps,  the  din  of  voices,  and  the  door  is 
opened  wide,  and  there  rush  in  headlong  :  Grossmann 
with  tied  tip  eyes,  holding  Sakhatov's  hand,  the  Pro- 
fessor and  Doctor,  Stout  Lady  and  Leonid  r^doro- 
vich,  Betsy  and  Petrishchev,  Vasili  Leonidych  and 
Marya  Konstautinovna,  Anna  Pavlovna  and  Baron- 
ess, F^dor  Ivanych  and  Tanya.  Three  peasants, 
Cook,  and  Old  Cook  (invisible).  (Peasants  jump  up. 
Grossmann  enters  with  rajnd  steps,  then  stops.) 

Stout  Lady.  Don't  worry !  I  have  undertaken  to 
watch  it,  and  I  strictly  fulfil  my  duty.  Sergy^y  Ivano- 
vich,  you  are  not  leading  him  ? 

Sakhatov.     No. 

Stout  Lady.  Don't  lead  him,  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
don't  oppose  yourself !  (To  Leonid  Fedorovich.)  I  know 
these  experiments,  I  used  to  make  them  myself.  I 
would  feel  the  efflux,  and  the  moment  I  felt  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Permit  me  to  ask  you  to  observe 
silence. 

Stout  Lady.     Ah,  I  understand  that  well!     I  have 
experienced  it  myself.     The  moment  my  attention  was 
•  distracted,  I  could  not  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Hush  — 

(They  walk  around,  searching  near  First  and  Second 
Peasant,  and  then  walk  over  to  Third  Peasant. 
Grossmann  runs  up  against  a  bench.) 

Baroness.     Mais  dites-moi,  on  le  paye  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Je  ne  saurais  vous  dire. 

Baroness.     Mais  c'est  un  monsieur  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Oh !  oui. 

Baroness.     Ca   tient  du  miraculeux.      N'est-ce  pas  ? 
Comment  est-ce  qu'il  trouve  ? 

Anna    Pavlovna.     Je   ne   saurais   vous   dire.      Mon 
mart  vous  I'expliquera.    (Seeing  the  peasants,  looks  around 


252     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

and  sees  the  Cool:)     Pardou  ?     What  is  tins  ?     {Baroness 
walks  over  to  the  group.) 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Cook).     Who  let  in  the  peasants  ? 
Cook.     Yakov  brought  them  here. 
Anna  Pavlovna.     Who  told  Yakov  to  bring  them  ? 
Cook.     I    can't   tell   you.     FMor   Ivauych    has    seen 
them. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Leouid ! 

{Leonid  Fedorovich   does  not   hear,  being  husy  ivith 

ndnd-readAng ,  and  says :  "  Hush  !  ") 

Anna  Pavlovna.     F^dor  Ivanych !     What  does   this 

mean  ?     Did  you  not  see  me  disinfect  the  antechamber  ? 

And  now  you  have  infected  the  whole  kitchen !     Black 

bread,  kvas,  — 

Fedor  Ivanvch.  I  thought  that  it  was  not  daugerous 
in  here,  and  the  men  have  come  on  business.  It  is  far 
for  them  to  go  elsewhere,  and  they  are  away  from  their 
village. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  That  is  the  trouble :  they  are  from 
a  Kursk  village,  where  they  are  dying  from  diphtheria  like 
flies.  The  main  thing  is  I  ordered  them  away  from  the 
house  !  Did  I  order  so  or  not  ?  ( Walks  over  to  the  group 
gathered  about  the  p)casants.)  Be  careful !  Don't  touch 
them !     They  are  infected  with  diphtheria  ! 

{Nobody  pays    any    attention    to    her.      She    walks 
away   with   dignity,   and  stands  motionless,  in 
expectation.) 
Petkisiighev  {snujflcs  aloud).    I  don't  know  about  diph- 
theria, but  there  is  some  other  infection  in  the  air.     Do 
you  smell  it  ? 

Betsy.  Stop  your  nonsense  !  Vovo,  in  which  wallet 
is  it  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  In  that  one,  in  that.  He  is  going 
up  to  it,  he  is  going  up  ! 

Petrishchev.     What  is  this  ?     Spirits  or  spirit  ? 
Betsy.     Now  your  cigarettes  would  be  in  place.    Smoke, 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  253 

smoke,  and  nearer  to  me !     (Fetrishchev  bends  down  and 
smokes  over  her.) 

Vasili  Leoxidych.  He  is  getting  near  it,  I  tell  you. 
Ah,  what  ? 

Gkossmann  (restlessl)/  groping  around  the  Third  Peas- 
ant).    Here,  here.     I  feel  that  it  is  here. 

Stout  Lady.  Do  you  feel  an  eiiiux  ?  (Grossmann 
lends  doivn  to  the  wallet  and  takes  the  spoon  out  of  it.) 

All.     Bravo  !     ( Universal  ecstasy.) 

Vasili  Leonidych.  So  this  is  where  our  spoon  was  ? 
{To  the  Peasant.)     So  that's  what  you  did  ? 

Third  Peasant.  What  did  I  do  ?  I  did  not  take 
your  spoon.  Don't  accuse  me  !  I  did  not  take  it,  I  did 
not,  and  my  soul  know's  nothing  about  it.  Let  him  gay 
what  he  please !  I  knew,  when  he  came,  that  it  would 
not  lead  to  anything  good.  "  Give  me  your  purse,"  he 
said.  I  did  not  take  it,  so  help  me  Christ,  I  did  not ! 
{Tlte  young  ijcople  su7'round  him  and  laugh.) 

Leonid  Fedoeovich  (angrily  to  his  son).  Eternally 
your  foolishness  !  (To  Third  Peasant.)  Don't  worry,  my 
friend !  We  know  that  you  did  not  take  it.  It  was  only 
a  trial. 

Grossmann  (takes  off  his  bandage  and  pretends  to  be 
waking  up).  A  little  water,  if  you  please.  (Everybody 
is  busy  about  him.) 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Let  us  go  from  here  to  the  coach- 
nnan's  room.  I  will  show  you  a  bitch  I  have  there ! 
Eptitant  !     Ah,  what ! 

Betsy.     What  a  nasty  word  !     Can't  you  say  "  dog  "  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Impossible.  One  could  not  say 
about  you  :  What  an  epdtant  man  Betsy  is  ?  One  has  to 
say  "  girl,"  just  so  in  this  case.  Ah,  what  ?  Marya 
Konstantiuovna,  is  it  so  ?     Was  it  good  ?     (Laughs) 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     Well,  let  us  go  ! 

(Alary a    Konstantinovna,    Betsy,     Petrishchev,    and 
Vasili  Leonidych  exeunt.) 


254     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

« 

Scene  XVIII.     The  same,  without  Betsy,  Mary  a  Kon- 
stantinovna,  Petrishchev,  and  Vasili  Leouidych. 

Stout  Lady  (to  Grossmann).  What  ?  How  ?  Are 
you  rested  ?  (Grossmcmn  does  not  ansiver.  To  Sakhdtov.) 
Sergy^y  Ivanych,  did  you  feel  the  efflux  ? 

Sakhatov.  I  did  not  feel  anything.  But  it  was  nice, 
very  nice,  —  quite  a  success. 

Baroness.     Admirable  !     Ga  ne  le  fait  pas  souffrir  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Pas  le  moins  du  monde. 

Professor  {to  Grossmann).  Permit  me  to  ask  you. 
{Giving  him  the  therm,ometer.)  At  the  beginning  of  the 
test  it  was  thirty-seven  and  two.  {To  the  doctor.)  That 
is  correct,  I  think  ?  Be  so  kind  as  to  verify  the  pulse. 
A  loss  is  unavoidable. 

Doctor  {to  Grossmann).  Well,  sir,  let  me  take  your 
pulse.  We  will  verify  it,  we  will.  {Takes  out  his  watch 
and  holds  his  hand.) 

Stout  Lady  {to  Grossmann).  Excuse  me  !  The  condi- 
tion in  which  you  were  cannot  be  called  sleep  ? 

Grossmann  {tired).     It  is  the  same  hypnosis. 

Sakhatov.  Then  we  must  understand  it  in  the  sense 
of  your  having  hypnotized  yourself  ? 

Grossmann.  Why  not  ?  Hypnosis  can  take  place  not 
only  through  association,  as,  for  example,  at  the  sound  of 
a  tam-tam,  as  with  Charcot,  but  by  a  mere  entrance  into  a 
hypnogenic  zone. 

Sakhatov.  I  shall  admit  that  that  is  coiTect,  but  it  is 
desirable  more  clearly  to  define  what  hypnosis  is. 

Professor.  Hypnosis  is  the  phenomenon  of  the  trans- 
mutation of  one  energy  into  another. 

Grossmann.     Charcot  did  not  define  it  thus. 

Sakhatov.  Excuse  me,  excuse  me.  Such  is  your  defi- 
nition, but  Libot  told  me  himself  — 

Doctor  {giving  up  the  pulse).  Ah,  it  is  aU  right,  all 
right.     Now  the  temperature. 


THE  FEUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     255 

Stout  Lady  (interposing).  No,  excuse  me!  I  agree 
with  Aleksy^y  Vladimirovich.  Here  you  have  the 
best  proof  of  all.  When,  after  my  illness,  I  lay  sense- 
less, I  was  overcome  by  a  desire  to  talk.  I  am  in 
general  reserved,  but  suddenly  the  desire  to  talk  de- 
veloped in  me,  and  they  tell  me  I  talked  so  that  they  all 
wondered.  (To  Sakhdtov.)  However,  I  think  I  inter- 
rupted you. 

Sakhatov  (with  dignitu).     Not  in  the  least.     Proceed  ! 

DocTOK.  The  pulse  is  eighty-two,  the  temperature  has 
risen  by  three-tenths. 

Professor.  So  here  you  have  the  proof.  That  is  what 
it  ought  to  be.  ( Takes  out  a  note-book  and  makes  a  mem- 
orandum.) Eighty-two,  am  I  right  ?  And  thirty-seven 
and  five  ?  As  soon  as  hypnosis  is  caused,  there  is  at  once 
an  intensified  action  of  the  heart. 

Doctor.  I  can  testify,  as  a  doctor,  that  your  prediction 
has  fully  been  realized. 

Professor  (to  Sakhdtov).     And  you  said  ?  — 

Sakhatov.  I  wanted  to  say  that  Libot  himself  told 
me  that  hypnosis  is  only  a  special  psychic  condition  which 
increases  suggestion. 

Professor.  However,  Libot  is  not  an  authority,  while 
Charcot  has  made  an  all-around  investigation  of  the  sul> 
ject  and  has  proved  that  hypnosis  produced  by  a  blow, 
trauma  — 

Sakhatov.  I  do  not  deny  Charcot's  labours.  I 
know  him,  too.     All  I  say  is  that  Libot  told  me  so. 

Grossmann  (hotly).  In  the  Salpetriere  there  are 
three  thousand  patients,  and  I  have  taken  a  full 
course. 

Professor.  Excuse  me,  gentlemen,  that  is  not 
the  point. 

Stout  Lady  (interposing).  I  will  explain  it  to  you  in 
two  words.  When  my  husband  was  ill,  all  the  doctors  re- 
fused — 


256     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  Let  us  go  back  to  the  house. 
Baroness,  if  you  please. 

(Jl£xeunt  all  speaking  together  and  interrupting  each 
other.) 

Scene  XIX.  Three  peasants,  Cook,  F^dor  Ivanych,  Tanya, 
Old  Cook  {on  the  oven),  Leonid  F^dorovich,  and  Anna 
Pavlovna. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {pulling  Leonid  Fedorovich's  sleeve  and 
stoppiiig  him).  How  many  times  have  I  told  you  not  to 
give  orders  in  the  house  !  You  know  only  your  fooHsh- 
ness,  and  the  house  is  on  my  shoulders.  You  will  infect 
everybody. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Who  ?  What  ?  I  do  not  under- 
stand a  word. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  ask  ?  People  sick  with  diph- 
theria sleep  in  the  kitchen,  where  there  is  a  constant 
intercourse  with  the  house  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  — 

Anna  Pavlovna.     What  I  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  do  not  know  anything. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  ought  to  know,  since  you  are 
the  father  of  a  family.     You  ought  not  to  do  this. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  did  not  think  —     I  thought  — 

Anna  Pavlovna.  It  makes  me  sick  to  listen  to 
you! 

{Leonid  Fedorovich  remains  silent.) 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Fedor  Ivdngch).  Out  with  them 
this  very  minute !  Let  them  not  be  in  my  kitchen ! 
This  is  terrible.  Nobody  obeys  me  !  Everything  against 
me  —  1  drive  them  away  from  one  place,  and  they  let 
them  in  here.  {Becomes  ever  more  agitated  until  tears  ap- 
pear.)     Everything   to  spite   me !     Everything  to   spite 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     257 

me !     And   with  my   ailing  —     Doctor,  doctor !      Peter 
Petrovich  !     He  has  gone  ! 

(Sobs  and  exit,  followed  by  Leonid  Fedorovich.) 

Scene  XX.    Three  peasants,  Tanya,  FMor  Ivanych,  Cook, 
and  Old  Cook  (on  oven). 

(Tableau.     All  stand  for  a  long  while  in  silence.) 

Third  Peasant.  God  be  merciful  with  them !  Before 
you  know  it  a  man  will  here  be  hauled  up  by  the  police. 
I  have  not  been  in  court  in  all  my  life.  Let  us  go  to  a 
lodging,  boys  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych  (to  Tanya).     What  is  to  be  done  ? 

Tanya.  Nothing,  F6dor  Ivanych.  Let  them  go  to 
the  coachman's  room. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  How  can  they  go  to  the  coachman's 
room  ?  The  coachman  has  been  complaining,  as  it  is,  that 
there  are  too  many  dogs  there. 

Tanya.     Well,  then,  to  the  male  servants'  room. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     But  if  they  should  find  out  ? 

Tanya.  They  will  not  find  out.  Have  no  fear,  FMor 
Ivanych.  How  can  we  drive  them  away  at  night  ?  They 
would  not  even  find  a  place. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  do  as  you  think  best,  so  they 
are  away  from  here.     (Exit.) 

Scene  XXL     Three   Peasants,    Tanya,    Cook,   and   Old 
Cook.     (Feasants  pick  up  tJieir  wallets.) 

Old  Cook.  I  declare,  they  are  accursed  devils  !  They 
are  having  too  good  a  time  !     The  devils  ! 

Cook.  You  shut  up !  Thank  the  Lord  they  did  not 
see  you ! 

Tanya.     Come,  my  uncles,  to  the  servants'  room  ! 

First  Peasant.     Well,  how  is  our  affair  ?     How,  for 


258     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

example,  is  it  in  regard  to  the  signature,  the  application  of 
the  hand  ?     Well,  are  we  to  be  in  hope  ? 

Tanya.     You  will  find  out  in  an  hour. 

Second  Peasant.     Shall  you  be  sly  enough  ? 

Tanya  (laughing).     If  God  is  willing. 

{Curtain.) 


ACT   III. 

Action  takes  place,  the  same  evening,  in  a  small  drawing- 
room,  where  all  the  tests  of  Leonid  Fedorovich  are 
made. 

Scene  I.     Leonid  Fedorovicli  and  Professor. 

Leonid  Fedorovich,  Well,  shall  we  risk  a  stance 
with  our  new  medium  ? 

Professor.  By  all  means.  The  medium  is  unques- 
tionably a  powerful  one.  Besides,  it  is  desirable  that  the 
mediumistic  stance  should  be  this  evening  and  with  the 
same  composition  of  the  audience.  Grossmann  will,  no 
doubt,  have  an  effect  on  the  mediumistic  energy,  and 
then  the  connection  and  oneness  of  the  phenomena  will 
be  much  more  manifest.  You  will  see  that  if  the  medium 
will  be  as  strong  as  before,  Grossmann  will  vibrate. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  In  that  case,  you  know,  I  will 
send  for  Sem^n,  and  will  invite  volunteers. 

Professor.  Yes,  yes.  In  the  meantime  I  want  to 
make  a  few  notes.     (^Takcs  out  a  note-hook  and  writes.) 

Scene  IL     The  same  and  Sakhatov. 

Sakhatov.  They  have  just  sat  down  to  cards  in  Anna 
Pavlovna's  apartments.  Being  an  odd  number,  and,  be- 
sides, having  an  interest  in  the  seance,  I  have  made  my 
appearance  here.     Well,  will  there  be  a  seance  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     There  will  be,  by  all  means. 

259 


260  THE    FRUITS    OF    E^TLIGHTENMENT 

Sakhatov.  What,  without  Mr.  Kapchich's  mediumis- 
tic  power  ? 

Leonid  Fedoeovich.  Vo7is  avez  la  main  heureuse. 
Just  imagine,  the  peasant  of  whom  I  told  you  turns  out 
to  be  a  real  medium. 

Sakhatov.  I  declare !  Oh,  but  that  is  particularly 
interesting ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes,  yes.  After  dinner  we  made 
a  little  preliminary  test  with  him. 

Sakhatov.  You  have  had  time  to  have  it  and  to  con- 
vince yourself  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Completely  so.  He  has  proved 
to  be  a  medium  of  wonderful  power. 

Sakhatov  {incredulously).     I  declare  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  It  now  turns  out  that  this  had 
been  known  quite  awhile  in  the  servants'  room.  When 
he  sits  down  to  a  cup,  the  spoon  jumps  into  his  hand, 
(^To  the  Professor.)     Have  you  heard  this  ? 

Professor.     No,  I  have  not  heard  this  particular  thing. 

Sakhatov  {to  the  Professor).  Still,  you  admit  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  phenomena  ? 

Professor.     Of  what  phenomena  ? 

Sakhatov.  Well,  in  general,  the  spiritualistic,  the 
mediumistic,  in  general,  the  supernatural  phenomena. 

Professor.  The  question  is  what  do  we  call  super- 
natural ?  When  not  a  living  man,  but  a  piece  of  stone, 
attracted  a  nail,  how  did  such  a  phenomenon  seem  to  the 
spectators,  natural  or  supernatural  ? 

Sakhatov.     Yes,  of  course.     Only,  such  phenomena, 
as  the  attraction  of  the  magnet,  are  continually  repeated. 

Professor.  The  same  thing  happens  here.  The 
phenomenon  is  repeated,  and  we  subject  it  to  investiga- 
tion. More  than  that,  we  subject  the  phenomena  under 
investigation  to  the  laws  which  are  common  to  other 
phenomena.  Phenomena  seem  to  be  supernatural  only 
because  the  causes  of  the  phenomena  are  ascribed  to  the 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     261 

medium  himself.     But  this  is  incorrect.     The  phenomena 
are  produced,  not  by  the  medium,  but  by  a  spiritual  energy 
working  in  the  medium,  and  that   is  a  great  difference. 
The  whole  matter  lies  in  the  law  of  equivalency. 
Sakhatov.     Yes,  of  course,  but  — 

Scene  III.     The  same  and  Tanya  {who  enters  and  stands 

behind  the  jiortiere). 

Leonid  Fedokovich,  You  must  remember  this  much  : 
as  with  Hume  and  Kapchich,  so  even  now  you  can't 
count  on  anything  for  certain  with  this  medium.  There 
may  be  a  failure,  and  there  may  be  a  complete  material- 
ization. 

Sakhatov.  Even  materialization  ?  What  kind  of  a 
materialization  can  it  be  ? 

Leonid  Fedoro vigil  For  example,  a  dead  person  may 
come  :  your  father  or  grandfather  will  take  your  hand 
and  will  give  you  something ;  or  somebody  will  rise  in 
the  air,  as  was  last  time  the  case  with  Aleksy^y  Vladi- 
mirovich. 

Professor.  Of  course,  of  course.  But  the  main  thing 
IS  to  explam  all  these  phenomena  and  to  bring  them 
under  common  laws. 

Scene  IV.     The  same  and  Stout  Lady. 

Stout  Lady.  Anna  Pavlovna  permitted  me  to  come 
to  see  you. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     You  are  welcome  ! 

Stout  Lady.  How  tired  out  this  Grossmann  is  !  He 
could  not  hold  a  cup.  Did  you  notice  how  pale  he  grew 
{to  the  Professor)  as  he  came  near  it  ?  I  noticed  it  at 
once,  and  I  was  the  first  to  mention  it  to  Anna  Pavlovna. 

Professor.  No  doubt.  There  was  a  loss  of  vital 
energy. 


262     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Stout  Lady.  That's  what  I  say,  —  we  ought  not  to 
misuse  it.  A  hypnotizer  had  suggested  to  a  friend  of 
mine,  Vy^rochka  Konshin,  —  you  know  her,  —  to  stop 
smoking,  and  her  spine  began  to  ache. 

Pkofessor  {wants  to  begin  speaking).  The  measure- 
ment of  the  temperature  and  of  the  pulse  show  ob- 
viously — 

Stout  Lady.  Just  a  minute,  excuse  me.  So  I  told  her 
it  would  be  better  to  smoke  than  to  suffer  from  the  nerves. 
Of  course,  smoking  is  harmful,  and  I  should  hke  to  give 
it  up,  but  do  what  you  please,  I  can't.  I  once  stopped 
for  two  weeks,  but  I  could  not  stand  it  any  longer. 

Professor  (again  makes  an  attempt  to  speak).  Show 
conclusively  — 

Stout  Lady.  No,  just  let  me  finish.  I  have  only  two 
words  more  to  say.  You  say  it  is  a  loss  of  strength  ?  I 
wanted  to  tell  you  that  when  I  travelled  post —  The 
roads  were  dreadful  then,  —  you  can't  remember  that, 
but  I  have  noticed  that  all  our  nervousness  comes  from 
the  railroads,  for  example,  I  can't  sleep  on  the  road, — 
kill  me,  but  I  can't  fall  asleep. 

Professor  (begins  again,  but  the  Stout  Lady  gives  him 
no  chance  to  speak).     The  loss  of  strength  — 

Sakuatov  (smiling).     Yes,  yes. 

(Leonid  Fedorovich  rings  the  bell.) 

Stout  Lady.  Though  I  have  been  without  sleep,  one, 
two,  three  nights,  I  cannot  fall  asleep. 

Scene  V.     The  same  and  Grigdri. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Please,  tell  Fedor  to  prepare 
everything  for  the  stance  and  call  Sem^n  here,  —  Sem^n, 
the  peasant  of  the  pantry,  —  do  you  hear? 

Grigori.     Yes,  sir !     (Exit.) 


THE   FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  263 

Scene  VI.      Leonid  Fedorovich,  Professor,  Stout  Lady, 
and  Tanya  (concealed). 

Professor  {to  Sakhdtov).  The  measurement  of  the 
temperature  and  pulse  show  a  loss  of  vital  energy. 
The  same  will  happen  at  mediumistic  phenomena.  The 
law  of  the  preservation  of  energy  — 

Stout  Lady.  Yes,  yes.  I  wanted  to  say  that  I  am 
very  glad  to  see  that  a  common  peasant  has  turned  out 
to  be  a  medium.  That  is  nice.  I  always  said  that  the 
Slavophiles  — 

Leoxid  Fedorovich.  Let  us  meanwhile  go  to  the 
drawing-room ! 

Stout  Lady.  Permit  me  to  say  just  two  words.  The 
Slavophiles  are  right,  but  I  always  tell  my  husband  that 
there  is  no  reason  for  exaggerating.  The  golden  means, 
you  know  —  How  can  one  affirm  that  everything  is 
good  with  the  masses,  when  I  myself  saw  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Won't  you,  please,  go  to  the 
drawing-room  ? 

Stout  Lady.  A  boy  not  bigger  than  this,  and  he 
drinks.  I  scolded  him.  He  was  grateful  to  me  for  it 
later  on.  They  are  children,  and  children,  so  I  always 
said,  need  love  and  severity  —      {All  exeunt,  talking.) 

Scene  VII.     Tanya  {alone,  coming  out  from  behind  the 

door). 

Tanya.     Oh,  if  I  only  may  succeed  !     {Ties  twine.) 

Scene  VIIL     Tanya  and  Betsy  {walks  in  hurriedly). 

Betsy.  Is  papa  not  here  ?  {Looking  at  Tanya.)  What 
are  you  doing  here  ? 

Tanya.  Oh,  Lizaveta  Leonidovna,  I  just  came  in  —  I 
wanted  —  I  just  came  in  —      {Confused.) 


264     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Betsy.  Isn't  there  going  to  be  a  st^ance  here  at  once  ? 
(^Noticing  that  Tanya  is  gathering  up  ihc  tivine,  looks 
fixedly  at  her,  and  bursts  out  laughing.)  Tanya  !  You 
have  been  doing  it  all !  Don't  deny  it !  And  you  did 
it  last  time  !     Yes,  you  did,  you  did ! 

Tanya.     Dear  Lizav(5ta  Leonidovna ! 

Betsy  (in  cestasy).  Ah,  how  good  that  is !  I  did  not 
expect  that !     Why  did  you  do  it  all  ? 

Tanya.  My  dear  Lizaveta  Leonidovna,  don't  give  me 
away  ! 

Betsy.  No,  not  for  anything  in  the  world.  I  am  so 
glad  !     How  do  you  do  it  ? 

Tanya.  Like  this :  I  will  hide  myself,  and  then,  when 
they  put  out  the  lights,  I  will  crawl  out  and  do  it. 

Betsy  {piointing  to  the  tivinc).  What  is  this  for  ? 
Yes,  I  understand,  you  don't  have  to  tell  me :  you  catch 
them  — 

Tanya.  Dear  Lizaveta  Leonidovna,  I  will  tell  you 
everything.  Before  this  I  only  joked,  but  now  I  want 
to  get  something  done. 

Betsy.     How  ?     What  ?     Something  done  ? 

Tanya.  You  have  seen  the  peasants  that  have  come 
to  buy  some  land.  jSTow,  your  papa  will  not  sell  it  to 
them,  and  he  has  returned  the  document  to  them  without 
signing  it.  F^dor  Ivanych  says  he  did  so  because  the 
spirits  have  told  him  to.     So  I  am  trying  it  this  way. 

Betsy.  Ah,  what  a  clever  girl  you  are  !  Do  it,  do  it ! 
How  are  you  going  to  do  it  ? 

Tanya.  Like  this :  the  moment  they  put  out  the 
lights,  I  will  begin  to  rap,  to  throw  the  twine  on  their  heads, 
and  finally  to  hurl  the  paper  on  the  floor,  and  ou  the 
table,  —  I  have  it  with  me. 

Betsy.     Well,  and  —  ? 

Tanya.  Well,  they  will  be  astonished.  The  paper 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  peasants,  and  suddenly  it  is  here. 
I  will  order  — 


THE  FRUITS  OP  ENLIGHTENMENT     265 

Betsy.     Oh,  yes,  Sem^n  is  the  medium  to-day ! 

Tanya.  I  will  order  him  {Can't  speak  for  laughter.)  — 
will  order  him  to  choke  anybody  that  gets  into  his  hands, 
—  only  not  your  papa,  —  that  he  will  not  dare  to  do,  — 
and  to  choke  them  until  the  paper  is  signed. 

Betsy  (lauglLing).  But  that  is  not  the  way  it  is  done. 
A  medium  does  not  do  anything  himself. 

Tanya.  Oh,  that  won't  hurt,  —  maybe  it  will  be  all 
right. 

Scene  IX.      Tanya  and  F^dor  Ivanych.      {Betsy  makes 
a  sig7i  to  Tanya  and  exit.) 

Fedor  Ivanych  {to  Tanya).     "What  are  you  doing  here  ? 

Tanya.  My  dear  F^dor  Ivanych,  I  have  come  to  see 
you  — 

Fedor  Ivanych.     What  is  it  ? 

Tanya.     About  what  I  have  been  asking  you. 

Fedor  Ivanych  {laughing).  I  have  made  the  match, 
I  have.  We  have  shaken  hands,  but  we  have  not  drunk 
anything. 

Tanya  {squeakiiig).     Is  it  really  so  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  tell  you  it  is.  He  said  he  would 
take  counsel  with  the  old  woman,  and  God  aid  you  ! 

Tanya.  He  did  say  that  ?  {Squeaking.)  Ah,  my 
dear  F^dor  Ivanych,  I  will  pray  all  my  life  for  you ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  All  right,  all  right!  I  am  busy 
now.     I  was  told  to  fix  things  for  the  stance. 

Tanya.    Let  me  help  you  !    How  do  you  want  to  fix  it  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  How  ?  Like  this :  the  table  in  the 
middle  of  the  room,  chairs,  the  guitar,  the  accordion.  Xo 
lamps,  —  just  candles. 

■  Tanya  {arranges  things  tvith  Fedor  Ivanych).  Is  this 
right  ?  The  guitar  here,  the  inkstand  here  —  {Placing 
things.)     Like  this  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     Will  they  really  put  Sem^n  down  ? 


266  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Tanya.  I  suppose  so.  They  have  had  him  in  the 
chair  once. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Wonderful!  {Putting  on  his  eye- 
glasses.)    But  is  he  clean  ? 

Tanya.     How  do  I  know  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     So  you  had  better  — 

Tanya.     What,  F^dor  Ivanych  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Go,  take  a  nail-brush  and  scented 
soap,  —  take  mine,  if  you  want  to,  —  and  cut  his  nails 
and  wash  them  clean. 

Tanya.     He  wiU  wash  them  himself. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Well,  tell  him  to  do  so.  And  let 
him  put  on  clean  linen. 

Tanya.     All  right,  F(^dor  Ivanych.     {Exit.) 

Scene  X.     F^dor    Ivanych   {alone,  sitting    down  in   an 

annchair). 

Fedor  Ivanych.  He  is  learned,  yes,  Aleksy^y  Vladl- 
mirovich  is  a  professor,  but  I  often  have  my  doubts  about 
him.  Popular  superstitions  are  coarse,  and  they  are  des- 
troyed: the  superstitions  about  house-spirits,  wizards, 
witches —  And  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  this  is 
just  such  a  superstition.  Eeally,  is  it  possible  for  the 
spirits  of  the  dead  to  speak  and  play  the  guitar  ?  Some- 
body is  foohng  them,  or  maybe  they  are  foohng  them- 
selves. I  can't  make  it  out  about  Sem^u.  {Looking 
through  the  album.)  Here  is  their  spiritualistic  album. 
How  can  one  take  a  photograph  of  a  spirit  ?  Here  is  a 
picture  of  a  Turk  sitting  with  Leonid  F^dorovich  —  A 
wonderful  human  weakness ! 

Scene  XL     F^dor  Ivanych  and  Leonid  F^dorovich. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {entering).  Well,  is  everything 
ready  ? 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  267  . 

Fedok  Ivanych  {rising  withotit  haste).  Yes.  (Smil- 
ing.) Ouly  I  am  afraid  your  new  medium  may  dis- 
grace himself,  Leonid  F^dorovich, 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  No,  Aleksy^y  Vladimirovich  and 
I  have  tested  him.     He  is  a  wonderfully  strong  medium  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  do  not  know  about  that.  But  is 
he  clean  ?  You  have  not  troubled  yourself  about  order- 
ing him  to  wash  his  hands.  It  might  cause  some 
inconvenience. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  His  hands  ?  Oh,  yes !  You 
think  they  might  be  dirty  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Yes,  he  being  a  peasant.  And  there 
will  be  ladies  present,  and  Marya  Vasilevna. 

Leonid  Fedorovich,     Let  them  be  ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  wanted  to  tell  you  something  else  : 
Timofey,  the  coachman,  came  to  complain  about  the 
dogs ;  he  says  it  is  impossible  to  keep  clean  on  account 
of  them. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {placing  things  on  the  table,  dis- 
tractedly).    What  dogs  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  They  brought  three  greyhounds  from 
Vasih  Leonidych  this  morning,  and  they  were  put  in  the 
coachman's  room. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {annoyed).  Tell  Anna  Pavlovna 
about  it  !     Let  her  do  as  she  pleases  !     I  have  no  time. 

Fedor  Ivan^^ch.  You  know  her  weakness  for  Vasili 
Leonidych  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Let  her  do  as  she  pleases.  From 
him  nothing  but  annoyance  —     Well,  I  have  no  time. 

Scene    XII.      The  same  and  Sem^n  (in  sleeveless  coat, 

enters  smiling). 

Semen.     Did  you  call  me  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes,  yes.  Let  me  see  your 
hands !     All  right,  all  right !     So,  my  dear,  you  do  just 


268      THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

as  you  did  before  !  Sit  down  and  abandon  yourself  to 
your  feeling !     Don't  do  any  thinking. 

Semen.  Why  should  I  think  ?  It  is  only  worse  if 
you  do. 

Leonid  Fedorovicii.  That*s  it,  that's  it!  The  less 
you  are  conscious,  the  stronger  it  will  be.  Don't  do  any 
thinking,  and  abandon  yourself  to  your  nioud  :  if  you  feel 
like  sleeping,  sleep ;  if  you  feel  like  walking,  walk ;  you 
understand  ? 

Semen.  Why  should  I  not  understand  ?  Tliere  is  no 
cunning  in  this  ! 

Leonid  Fedoeovich.  The  main  thing  is  not  to  get 
confused,  for  you  might  be  surprised  at  yourself.  You 
must  understand  that  just  as  we  live,  so  the  invisible 
world  of  spirits  lives  with  us. 

Fedor  Ivanych  {correcting  him).  Unseen  feelings,  you 
understand  ? 

Semen  (laughing).  Why  should  I  not  ?  What  you 
say  is  so  simple. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  If  you  feel  like  rising  in  the 
air,  or  something  like  it,  don't  lose  courage. 

Semen.  Why  should  I  lose  courage  ?  What  do  I 
care  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Well,  then  I  will  go  and  call 
them  all.     Is  everything  ready  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.     I  think,  yes. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     And  the  slates  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  They  are  down-stairs.  I  will  bring 
them  in  at  once.     {Exit.) 

Scene  XIII.     Leonid  Fedorovich  and  Sem^n. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Well,  all  right,  then.  So  don't 
get  confused,  and  be  at  your  ease ! 

Semen.  Shall  I  take  off  my  coat  ?  That  will  make 
ine  more  at  my  ease. 


THE    FRUITS    OF    EXLIGIITEXMEKT  2G9 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Your  coat  ?  No,  no,  keep  it  on  ! 
(Exit.) 

Scene  XIV,     Sem^u  (alone). 

Semen.  She  told  me  to  do  the  same  again,  and  she 
will  hurl  around  things  as  then.  I  wonder  how  it  is  she 
is  not  afraid. 

Scene  XV.     Sem^n  and  Tanya  (comes  in  without  shoes 
in  a  dress  of  the  colour  of  the  wall-paper.    Semen  roars). 

Tanya.  Hush  ■  They  will  hear  us !  Eub  some 
matches  on  your  fingers  as  you  did  the  last  time.  (Bubs 
them  071.)     Well,  do  you  remember  everything  ? 

Semen  (bending  his  fingers).  First,  to  moisten  the 
matches.  Wave  the  hands,  —  that  is  one  thing.  Then 
to  gnash  my  teeth,  —  that  is  the  second.  I  have  forgotten 
the  third. 

Tanya.  The  third  thing  is  the  most  important.  Lis- 
ten :  when  the  paper  falls  on  the  table,  and  I  ring  a  bell, 
you  stretch  out  your  arms  like  this.  Stretch  them  out  as 
far  as  you  can  and  catch  a  person.  Catch  anybody  that 
is  sitting  nearest  to  you.  And  when  you  get  hold  of 
some  one,  press  as  hard  as  you  can.  (Laughs.)  Whether 
it  be  a  lady  or  a  gentleman,  press  as  hard  as  you  can,  and 
don't  let  the  person  get  away !  Do  it,  as  though  you 
were  asleep,  and  gnash  your  teeth,  or  bellow,  like  this  — 
(Bellows.)  When  I  begin  to  play  on  the  guitar,  act  as 
though  you  were  waking  up  !  Stretch  yourself,  and  wake 
up  !     Do  you  remember  everything  ? 

Semen.     I  do,  but  it  is  too  funny. 

Tanya.  Don't  laugh  !  If  you  do,  that  will  not  be  so 
bad.  They  will  think  you  are  doing  it  in  your  sleep. 
Only  don't  fall  asleep  for  good,  when  they  put  out  the 
lights. 

Semen.     Don't  be  afraid  i     T  will  be  pinching  ray  ears. 


270     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Tanya.  Do  everything  right,  Sem^n  dear.  Only  do 
everything,  and  don't  be  afraid  !  He  will  sign  the  paper, 
you  will  see  he  will.  They  are  coming.  {Crawls  under 
the  sofa.) 

Scene  XVI.  Sem^n  a7id  Tanya.  Enter:  Grossnaann, 
Professor,  Leonid  F^dorovich,  Stout  Lady,  Sakhdtov, 
a,nd  Anna  Pavlovna.     Sem(^n  stands  at  the  door. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  If  you  please,  all  unbehevers  ! 
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  to-night  we  have  a  new, 
casual  medium,  I  expect  some  remarkable  manifestations. 

Sakhatov.     Very,  very  interesting  ! 

Stout  Lady  [pointing  to  Semen).  Mais  il  est  tres 
hien ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.     As  a  peasant  of  the  pantry,  only  — 

Sakhatov.  M^'ives  never  believe  in  the  affairs  of  their 
husbands.     You  do  not  admit  at  all  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Of  course  not.  In  Kapchich,  it  is 
true,  there  is  something  especial,  but  not  so  much, 
either. 

Stout  Lady.  Excuse  me,  Anna  Pavlovna,  you  must 
not  judge  this  way.  Before  I  was  married  I  once  had  a 
remarkable  dream.  You  know,  there  are  dreams  of  such 
a  kind  that  you  do  not  know  when  they  begin  and  when 
they  end.     So  I  had  such  a  dream  — 

Scene  XVII.      The   same,   Vasili   Leonidych   and   Pe- 

trishchev  (enter). 

Stout  Lady.  I  had  much  revealed  to  me  in 
that  dream.  Nowadays  these  young  people  (pointing 
to  Petrishchev  and  to  Vasili  Leonidycli)  deny  every- 
thing. 

VAsfLi  Leonidych.  I  never  deny  anything,  let  me 
tell  you.     Ah,  what  ? 


TEE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  271 

Scene    XVIII.      The   same.     Enter    Betsy    and    M^rya 
Konstantiuovua.     They  begin  to  talk  with  Petrishchev. 

Stout  Lady.  How  can  one  deny  the  supernatural  ? 
They  say  that  it  does  not  agree  with  reason.  But  there 
may  be  a  stupid  reason,  then  what  ?  Now,  on  Sadovaya 
Street,  —  have  you  heard  about  it  ?  —  there  was  an  appari- 
tion which  came  every  night.  The  brother  of  my  husband, 
—  what  do  you  call  him  ?  —  not  heau  frere,  but  in  Kus- 
sian,  —  oh,  I  never  can  remember  those  Eussian  family 
relations,  —  well,  he  went  there  three  nights  in  succes- 
sion, and  could  not  see  anything,  so  I  said  — 

Leonid  Fedoeovich.     So,  who  will  stay  ? 

Stout  Lady.     I,  I ! 

Sakhatoy.     I ! 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Doctor).    And  you,  too,  will  stay  ? 

DocTOK.  I  want  to  see  at  least  once  what  it  is  Aleksyey 
Vladimirovich  finds  here.  I  can't  deny  without  having 
had  any  proofs, 

Anna  Paylovna.  And  so  you  want  me  by  aU  means 
to  take  them  to-night  ? 

Doctor.  Take  whom  ?  Oh,  the  pills  !  Yes,  take  them, 
if   you    please !      Yes,   yes,   take   them  —     I    will    call 


again. 


Anna  Pavloyna.  If  you  please.  {Aloud.)  When 
you  get  through,  messieurs  et  mesdames,  please  come  to 
my  apartment  to  rest  from  your  emotion,  and  to  finish 
the  game  of  cards. 

Stout  Lady.     By  all  means. 

Sakhatov.     Yes,  yes !     {Anna  Pavlovna  exit.) 

Scene  XIX.     The  same,  without  Anna  Pavlovna. 

Betsy  {to  Petrishchev).  I  tell  you,  stay.  I  promise 
you  unusual  things.     Will  you  wager  ? 

Marya  Konstantinovna.     Do  you  believe  in  it  ? 


272     THE  FEUITS  OF  ENLIGnTEKMENT 

Betsy.     To-uight  I  do. 

Maeya  Konstantinovna  {to  Petrishchev).  And  do 
you  believe  ? 

Petrishchev.  "  I  believe  not,  I  believe  not  thy  cun- 
ning vows."     Well,  if  Elizaveta  Leonidovna  commands  — 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Let  us  stay,  Marya  Konstanti- 
novna !     Ah,  what  ?     I  will  concoct  something  epatant. 

Marya  Konstantinovna.  No,  don't  make  me  laugh. 
I  can't  keep  from  laughing. 

Vasili  Leonidych  {aloud).     I  will  stay  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {sternly).  All  I  ask  is  that  those 
who  stay  will  not  turn  this  into  a  joke.  This  is  a  serious 
matter. 

Petrishchev.  You  hear  ?  Well,  we  will  stay.  Vovo, 
sit  down  here,  and  don't  you  lose  your  courage ! 

Betsy.    You  are  laughing,  but  wait  and  see ! 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Well,  what  is  it  indeed  ?  It  will 
be  a  fine  thing  '     Ah,  what  ? 

Petrishchev  {tremUimj).  Oh,  I  am  afraid,  I  am  afraid. 
Marya  Konstantinovna,  I  am  afraid !  My  little  legs  are 
cremblimr. 

Betsy  {laughing).     Hush  up  !      {All  sit  down.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Sit  down,  if  you  please  !  Sem^n, 
sit  down ! 

Semen.     Yes,  sir.     {Sits  doion  on  the  edge  of  the  chair.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Sit  down  better ! 

Professor.  Sit  down  regularly,  on  the  middle  of  the 
chair,  at  your  ease.       {Seats  Semen.) 

{Betsy,  Marya  Konstantinovna,  and  Vasili  Leonidych 
laugh?) 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {raising  his  voice).  I  ask  those 
who  remain  not  to  jest,  but  to  take  the  matter  seriously. 
There  might  be  evil  consequences.  Vovo,  do  you  hear  ? 
If  you  can't  sit  quietly,  go  out ! 

VAsiLi  Leonidych.  Quiet !  {Hides  himself  behind  the 
back  of  Stout  Lady.) 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     273 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Aleksy^y  Vladimirovich,  put 
him  in  a  trance  ! 

Professor.  No,  Anton  Borisovich  is  here,  and  he  has 
more  practice  in  this  matter  than  I,  and  power  —  Anton 
Borisovich  ! 

Grossmaxn.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  not  really  a 
spiritualist.  I  have  only  studied  hypnosis.  Hypnosis  I 
have  studied,  it  is  true,  in  all  its  known  manifestations, 
but  that  which  is  called  spiritualism  is  entirely  unknown 
to  me.  From  the  trance  of  a  subject  I  may  expect  certain 
familiar  phenomena  of  hypnosis :  lethargy,  aboulia,  anaes- 
thesia, analgesia,  catalepsy,  and  all  kinds  of  suggestion. 
But  here  not  these,  but  other  phenomena  are  to  be  sub- 
jected to  investigation,  and  so  it  would  be  desirable  to 
know  what  these  expected  phenomena  are,  and  what  sci- 
entific siguificauce  they  have. 

Sakhatov.  I  fully  concur  with  Mr.  Grossmann's 
opinion.     Such  an  elucidation  would  be  very  interesting. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {to  the  Professor).  I  think,  Alek- 
syey  Vladimirovich,  you  will  uot  refuse  to  make  a  short 
explanation. 

Professor.  I  do  not  object.  I  can  explain  it,  if  you 
so  wish.  {To  the  Doctor.)  You,  please,  measure  the  tem- 
perature and  pulse.  My  exposition  will,  unavoidably,  be 
superficial  and  brief. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Yes,  brief,  brief. 

Doctor.  Directly.  {Takes  out  a  tTiermometer  and  gives 
it  to  Semen.)  Well,  my  good  fellow !  {Places  it  in  his 
mouth.) 

Semen.     Yes,  sir. 

Professor  {rising  and  turning  to  the  Stout  Lady,  then 
sitting  doivn).  Ladies  and  gentlemen  !  The  phenomenon 
which  we  are  investigating  generally  represents  itself,  on 
the  one  hand,  as  something  novel,  and,  on  the  other, 
as  something  transcending  the  natural  order  of  things. 
Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  is  correct.     This  phenome- 


274     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

non  is  not  new,  but  as  old  as  the  world,  and  not  super- 
natural, but  is  subject  to  the  same  eternal  laws  to  which 
everything  in  existence  is  subject.  This  phenomenon  has 
usually  been  defined  as  a  communion  with  the  spiritual 
world.  This  definition  is  not  exact.  According  to  this 
definition,  the  spiritual  world  is  opposed  to  the  material 
world,  but  this  is  not  right :  there  is  no  such  opposition. 
Both  worlds  are  contiguous,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to 
draw  a  line  of  demarcation,  which  should  separate  the 
one  world  from  the  other.  We  say  that  matter  is  com- 
posed of  molecules  — 

Petrishchev.  Dull  matter !  ( Whispering,  laughter.) 
Professor  (stopping,  and  then  continuing).  Molecules 
of  atoms,  but  atoms,  having  no  extension,  are  in  reality 
nothing  but  points  of  application  of  forces,  that  is, 
strictly  speaking,  not  of  forces,  but  of  energy,  —  of  that 
same  energy  which  is  as  one  and  indestructible  as  matter. 
But  just  as  matter  is  one  and  its  forms  are  different,  even 
so  it  is  with  energy.  Within  recent  time  we  have  been 
acquainted  with  only  four  forms  of  energy,  which  change 
one  into  another.  We  know  the  dynamic,  thermic,  elec- 
trical, and  chemical  energies.  But  these  four  forms  of 
energy  are  far  from  exhausting  all  the  varieties  of  its 
manifestations.  The  forms  of  the  manifestations  of  energy 
are  manifold,  and  one  of  these  new,  httle  known  forms  of 
energy  is  now  to  be  investigated  by  us.  I  am  speaking 
of  the  energy  of  mediumism. 

(Again  whispers  and  laughter  in  the  corner  of  the 
young  people.) 
Professor  (stops  and,  looking  ste^^nly  around  him,  con- 
tinues). The  mediumistic  energy  has  been  known  to 
humanity  since  time  immemorial :  predictions,  presenti- 
ments, visions,  and  many  others,  —  all  those  are  nothing 
else  but  manifestations  of  mediumistic  energy.  The 
phenomena  produced  by  it  have  been  known  since  time 
immemorial     But  the  energy  itself  has  not  been  acknowl- 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     275 

edged  as  such  until  recently,  when,  at  last,  we  came  to 
acknowledge  the  medium,  the  vibration  of  which  pro- 
duces the  mediumistic  phenomena.  And  just  as  the 
phenomena  of  light  remained  inexplicable  until  the  exist- 
ence of  an  imponderable  substance,  that  of  ether,  was 
accepted,  even  so  mediumistic  phenomena  seemed  myste- 
rious as  long  as  we  did  not  accept  the  now  undoubted 
truth  that  in  the  interstices  of  the  ether  there  is  another 
even  more  delicate  and  imponderable  substance,  which 
is  not  subject  to  the  law  of  the  three  dimensions  — 

(Again  lohisper,  laughter,  and  squeaking.) 

Pkofessor  {agoAn  looking  sternly  around  him).  And 
just  as  mathematical  calculations  have  irrefragably  con- 
firmed the  existence  of  imponderable  ether  which  pro- 
duces the  phenomena  of  light  and  electricity,  even  so  a 
brilhant  series  of  most  exact  investigations  of  Hermann, 
Schmidt,  and  Joseph  Schmatzofen  have  undeniably  con- 
firmed the  exi.stence  of  that  substance  which  fills  the 
universe  and  which  may  be  denominated  as  spiritual 
ether. 

Stout  Lady.  Now  I  understand.  How  thankful  I 
am  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes.  But,  Aleksy^y  Vladimiro- 
vich,  can't  you  —  abbreviate  —  a  little  ? 

Professor  (without  replying  to  him).  And  thus,  a 
series  of  strictly  scientific  experiments  and  investigations, 
as  I  have  had  the  honour  of  informing  you,  has  made 
clear  to  us  the  laws  of  mediumistic  phenomena.  These 
experiments  have  made  it  clear  to  us  that  the  putting  of 
certain  individuals  into  a  hypnotic  state,  which  differs  from 
common  sleep  only  in  that  by  falling  into  this  sleep  the 
physiological  activity  is  not  only  not  lowered,  but  always 
raised,  as  we  have  just  seen,  —  it  has  become  manifest 
that  the  putting  into  this  condition  of  any  subject  whatso- 
ever invariably  causes  certain  perturbations  in  the  spiritual 
ether,  —  perturbations  which  completely  resemble  those 


276     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

perturbatious  which  are  produced  by  the  immersion  of 
a  solid  body  in  a  liquid.  These  perturbations  are  what 
we  call  mediumistic  phenomena  —  {Laughter,  whisper- 
ing.) 

Sakhatov.  This  is  quite  just  and  intelligible ;  but 
permit  me  to  ask  you  :  If,  as  you  have  said,  putting  a 
medium  to  sleep  produces  perturbations  of  the  spiritual 
ether,  why,  then,  do  these  perturbations  find  their  expres- 
sions, as  is  generally  understood  in  spiritualistic  stances, 
in  manifestations  of  the  activity  of  dead  persons  ? 

Professor.  Because  the  particles  of  this  spiritual 
ether  are  nothing  but  the  souls  of  the  living,  the  dead, 
and  those  not  born,  so  that  every  concussion  of  this  spir- 
itual ether  inevitably  causes  a  certain  motion  of  its  par- 
ticles. But  these  particles  are  nothing  but  the  souls  of 
men  which  by  this  motion  are  brought  into  communion. 

Stout  Lady  {to  Sakhatov).  What  is  there  here  not  to 
understand  ?  This  is  so  simple  —  I  thank  you  very, 
very  much ! 

Leonid  Fedorovigh.  It  seems  to  me  that  everything 
is  clear  now,  and  that  we  can  begin. 

Doctor.  The  lad  is  in  the  most  normal  of  conditions : 
temperature,  37.2  ;  pulse,  74. 

Professor  {takes  out  a  note-booh,  and  makes  a  memo- 
randum). As  a  confirmation  of  that  which  I  have  had 
the  honour  of  presenting  to  you  will  be  the  fact  that  put- 
ting the  medium  to  sleep  inevitably  brings  with  it,  as  we 
shall  soon  see,  a  rise  in  temperature  and  pulse,  just  as  in 
the  case  of  hypnosis. 

Leonid  Fedorovigh.  Pardon  me,  but  I  should  like  to 
answer  Sergy^y  Tvanych's  question  as  to  how  it  is  we 
know  that  the  spirits  of  deceased  persons  are  communing 
with  us.  We  know  this  because  the  spirit  who  comes 
tells  us  so  straight  out,  —  just  as  simply  as  I  am  saying 
this,  —  he  tells  us  who  he  is,  why  he  has  come,  where  he 
is,  and  whether  he  is  happy.     At  the  last  stance  came 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  277 

the  Spaniard  Don  Castillos,  and  he  told  us  everything. 
He  told  us  who  he  was,  and  when  he  died,  and  that  he 
was  suffering  for  having  taken  part  in  the  Inquisition. 
More  than  that :  he  informed  us  of  what  was  taking  place 
during  the  very  time  he  was  speaking  with  us,  namely, 
while  he  was  speaking  with  us  he  had  to  be  reborn  upon 
earth,  and  so  he  could  not  finish  the  conversation  which 
he  had  begun  —     Well,  you  will  see  for  yourself. 

Stout  Lady  {intcrruipting  liim).  Ah,  how  interesting  ! 
Maybe  the  Spaniard  was  born  in  our  house,  and  is  now 
a  baby. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Not  impossible. 
Professor.     I  think  it  is  time  to  begin. 
Leonid  Fedoeoyich.     I  only  wanted  to  say  — 
Professor.     It  is  late  already. 

Leonid  Pedoroyich.  Well,  all  right.  So  we  can 
begin.  Anton  Borisovich,  please,  put  the  medium  to 
sleep  — 

Grossmann.  How  do  you  wish  me  to  put  the  subject 
to  sleeps  There  are  many  possible  means.  There  is 
Brede's  system,  there  is  the  Egyptian  symbol,  there  is 
Charcot's  system. 

Leonid  Pedorovich  {to  Professor).  That  makes  no 
diflference,  I  think. 

Professor.     It  is  a  matter  of  indifference. 
Grossmann.     Then    I    will    apply    my    own    system, 
which  I  have  demonstrated  in  Odessa. 
Leonid  Pedorovich.     If  you  please  ! 

( Grossmann  waves  his  hands  over  Semen.  Semen  closes 
his  eyes  and  stretches  himself.) 
Grossmann  {looUng  closely  at  him).  He  is  falhng 
asleep —  He  is  asleep.  A  remarkably  quick  appear- 
ance of  hypnosis  !  The  subject  has  apparently  already 
entered  upon  his  anaesthetic  condition.  A  remarkably, 
unusually  receptive  subject,  and  he  might  be  subjected 
to  interesting  experiments  !    {Sits  down,  gets  up,  and  again 


278     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

sits  down.)     We  now  could    put  a   needle  through    his 
hand.     If  you  wish  — 

Professor  (to  Leonid  Fedorovich).  Do  you  notice  how 
the  medium's  sleep  is  affecting  Grossmann  ?  He  is  be- 
ginning to  vibrate. 

Leonid  Fedorovich,  Yes,  yes —  Can  we  now  put 
out  the  lights  ? 

Sakhatov,     But  why  must  we  have  darkness  ? 

Professor.  Darkness  ?  Because  darkness  is  one  of 
the  conditions  under  which  mediumistic  energy  is  mani- 
fested, just  as  a  certain  temperature  is  the  condition  for 
certain  manifestations  of  chemical  and  dynamic  energy. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Not  always.  Many  people  have 
things  happen  to  them  at  caudle-light,  and  even  in  day- 
light.    They  have  happened  to  me. 

Professor  (interrupting  him).  May  we  now  have  the 
lights  out  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes,  yes.  (Fids  out  the  lights.) 
Ladies  and  gentlemen  !     Please  pay  attention  now  ! 

(Tanya  crawls  out  from  under  the  sofa  and  takes 
hold  of  the  thread  which  is  attached  to  the  can- 
delabrum.) 

Petrishchev.  Really,  I  like  the  Spaniard.  How,  dur- 
ing the  conversation,  he  —  down  his  head  —  how  do  you 
translate  inquer  une  tete  ? 

Betsy.  No,  you  just  wait,  and  you  will  see  what  will 
happen ! 

Petrishchev.  I  am  afraid  of  one  thing  only,  and  that 
is,  that  Vovo  will  grunt  like  a  pig. 

Vasili  Leonidych,  Do  you  want  me  to  do  it?  I 
will  grab  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich,  Ladies  and  gentlemen !  I  ask 
you  not  to  speak  — 

(Silence.  Semen  sucks  his  finger,  rubs  the  spittle  on 
his  knuckles,  and  waves  his  hands.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     A  light !     Do  you  see  a  light  ? 


THE  FKUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     279 

Sakhatov.  a  light?  Yes,  yes,  I  see,  but  permit 
Die  — 

Stout  Lady.  Where,  where  ?  Ah,  I  have  not  seen 
it !     There  it  is  !    Ah  ! 

Professor  {to  Leonid  Fedorovich,  in  a  whisper,  pointing 
to  Grossmann,  who  is  moving  about).  Notice  how  he  is 
vibrating  !     A  double  force  !    {Again  a  phosphorescence.) 

Leonid  Fedoeovich  {to  Professor).     That  is  he  ? 

Sakhatov.     What  he  ? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  The  Greek  Nicholas.  It  is  his 
hght.     Is  it  not  so,  Aleksyey  Vladimirovich  ? 

Sakhatov.     ^\'Tio  is  this  Greek  Nicholas  ? 

Professor.  A  certain  Greek,  who  was  a  monk  in  the 
time  of  Constantiue  at  Constantinople  and  who  visited  us 
last  time. 

Stout  Lady.     Where  is  he,  where  ?     I  do  not  see. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  He  cannot  be  seen  yet  — 
Aleksyey  Vladimirovich,  he  is  always  especially  well 
disposed  to  you.     Ask  him  ! 

Professor  {in  a  pectdiar  voice).  Nicholas,  is  it 
you  ? 

{Tanya  raps  tiuice  against  the  wall.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {joyfully).     He,  he  ! 

Stout  Lady.     Oh,  oh  !     I  am  going  away  ! 

Sakhatov.  On  what  ground  is  it  assumed  that  it  is 
he? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Two  raps  are  an  affirmative 
answer.     Else  there  would  have  been  a  silence. 

{Silence.  Repressed  laughter  in  the  young  people's 
corner.  Tanya  throws  upon  the  table  a  lamp- 
shade, a  'pencil,  and  a  pen-wiper.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {in  a  whisper).  Notice,  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  here  is  a  lamp-shade.  Something  else. 
A  pencil !     Aleksyey  Vladimirovich,  a  pencil ! 

Professor.  All  right,  all  right.  I  am  watching  him 
and  Grossmann.     Do  you  notice  ? 


280  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

(^Grossmann  7'ises  and  looks  at  the  objects  which  have 
fallen  on  the  table.) 

Sakhatov.  Excuse  me,  excuse  me  !  I  should  like  to 
see  whether  the  medium  is  not  doing  it  all  himself. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Do  you  think  so  ?  Then  sit 
down  near  him,  and  hold  his  hands.  But  you  may  be 
sure  he  is  asleep. 

Sakhatov  (walks  over,  catches  with  his  head  into  the 
thread,  which  Tanya  has  lowered,  and  stoops  in  fright). 
Yes!  Strange,  strange!  (Goes  wp,  takes  Semen  by  the 
elbow.     Semen  bellows.) 

Professor  {to  Leonid  Fedorovich).  Do  you  hear  how 
Grossmann's  presence  affects  him  ?  A  new  phenomenon, 
—  I  must  note  it  down —  (Runs  out  of  the  room,  notes 
it  down,  and  returns.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Yes.  But  we  ought  not  to  leave 
Nicholas  without  an  answer.     We  ought  to  begin  — 

Grossmann  (gets  up,  walks  over  to  Semen,  raises  and 
drops  his  Jtand).  Now  it  would  be  interesting  to  pro- 
duce a  contracture.  The  subject  is  in  a  state  of  absolute 
hypnosis. 

Professor  (to  Leonid  Fedorovich).  Do  you  see,  do  you 
see? 

Grossmann.     If  you  wish  — 

Doctor.  Permit,  sir,  Aleksyey  Vladimirovich  to  go 
through  with  it :  it  is  a  serious  matter. 

Professor.  Leave  him  alone  !  He  is  already  speaking 
in  his  sleep. 

Stout  Lady.  How  glad  I  am  I  have  decided  to  stay'i 
It  frightens  me,  but  still  I  am  glad,  because  I  always  told 
my  husband  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  beg  you  to  keep  quiet. 

(Tiinya  passes  the  thread  over  the  head  of  the  Stout 
Lady.) 

Stout  Lady.     Ouch! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     What,  what  is  it  ? 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  281 

Stout  Lady.     He  took  me  by  my  hair ! 

Leonid  Fedoeoyich  (in  a  whisper).  Don't  be  afraid  ! 
It  will  not  hurt !  Give  him  your  hand !  The  hand  is 
generally  cold,  but  I  like  it. 

Stout  Lady  {hiding  her  hands).     Not  for  the  world  ! 

Sakhatov.     Yes,  it  is  strange,  it  is  strange. 

Leonid  Fedoroyich.  He  is  here  and  wants  to  com- 
municate.    Who  wants  to  ask  any  question  ? 

Sakhatoy.  Please  let  me  ask  ?  —  Do  I  believe,  or 
not  ?     {Tanya  raps  twice.) 

Peofessor,     An  affirmative  answer. 

Sakhatov.  Allow  me  to  ask  again.  Have  I  a  ten- 
rouble  bill  in  my  pocket  ? 

{Tanya  raps  seveixd  times  and  passes  the  thread  over 
SakhdtGvs  head.) 

Sakhatov,     Ah !     {Catches  the  thread  and  hreaks  it 

off.) 

Professor.     I  should  like  those  present  not  to  put 

any   indefinite    or    jocular  remarks.     He    does    not   like 

it. 

Sakhatov.  Excuse  me,  but  I  have  a  thread  in  my 
hand. 

Leonid  Fedoroyich.  A  thread  ?  Keep  it !  That  fre- 
quently happens.  Not  only  threads,  but  silk  cords,  very 
antique  cords,  too. 

Sakhatov.     Still,  where  does  the  thread  come  from  ? 

{Tclnya  throivs  a  cushion  at  him.) 

Sakhatov.  Excuse  me,  excuse  me !  Something  soft 
has  struck  my  head.  Let  us  have  some  light.  There  is 
something  here  — 

Professor.  We  beg  you  not  to  interfere  wdth  the 
manifestations. 

Stout  Lady.  For  the  Lord's  sake,  don't  interfere !  I 
want  to  ask  something.     May  I  ? 

Leonid  Fedoroyich.  You  may,  you  may.  Ask 
him  ! 


282     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Stout  Lady.  I  want  to  ask  about  my  stomach.  May 
I  ?  I  want  to  ask  what  I  had  better  take,  aconite  or 
belladonna  ? 

{Silence.      WTiispering  in  the  young  people's  corner, 
and  suddenly  Vasili  Leonidych  cries  like  a  suck- 
ling lobe :  "  Ooali,  ooah  !  "    Laughter.    Holding 
their  noses  and  mouths,  and  snorting,  the  young 
women  run  out  with  Petrishchev.) 
Stout  Lady.     Ah,  no  doubt,  this  monk  is  born  anew  ! 
Leonid   Fedorovich  {furious,  in  an  angry  whisper). 
You  can't  do  anything  but  foohsh  things '     If  you  can't 
behave,  go  out !     (  Vasili  Leonidych  exit.) 

Scene  XX.  Leonid  Fedorovich,  Professor,  Stout  Lady, 
Sakhatov,  Grossmann,  Doctor,  Sem^n,  and  Tanya. 
Darkness  and  silence. 

Stout  Lady.  Oh,  what  a  pity!  Now  I  can't  ask 
any  more !     He  is  born  now  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Not  at  all.  That  was  Vovo's 
foolishness.     He  is  here.     Ask  him ! 

Professor.  This  often  happens :  these  jests  and  this 
ridicule  are  a  very  common  phenomenon.  I  assume  that 
he  is  still  here.  Anyway,  we  may  ask.  Leonid  Fedo- 
rovich, you  ask  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  No,  if  you  please,  you  ask ! 
This  has  put  me  out.  It  is  so  disagreeable !  This  tact- 
lessness — 

Professor.  All  right !  All  right !  Nicholas,  are  you 
here? 

{Tanya  raps  twice  and  ri7igs  the  bell.  Semen  begins 
to  bellow  and  to  wave  his  hands.  Gets  hold  of 
Sakhatov  and  of  the  Professor  and  chokes  them.) 

Professor.  Such  an  unexpected  manifestation !  An 
interaction  on  the  medium  himself.  This  is  entirely  new. 
Leonid  Fedorovich,  you  keep  watch,  I  am  in  an  uncom- 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     283 

fortable  position.  He  is  choking  me.  See  what  Gross- 
niann  is  doiug.  Now  you  must  be  as  attentive  as  pos- 
sible. 

(Tanya  throws  the  peasants'  paper  on  the  table.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Something  has  fallen  on  the 
table. 

Professor.     See  what  it  is. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  A  paper!  A  folded  sheet  of 
paper!     {Tanya  throws  a  pocket  inkstand  on  the  table.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     An  inkstand  ! 

(Tanya  throws  a  pen  on  the  table.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     A  pen  ! 

[Semen  bellows  and  chokes  them.) 

Professor  (out  of  breath).  Excuse  me,  this  is  an 
absolutely  new  phenomenon.  Not  the  elicited  medium- 
istic  energy  is  here  at  work,  but  the  medium  himself. 
Open  the  inkstand,  and  put  the  pen  on  the  paper !  He 
will  write. 

(Tanya  walks  up  to  Leonid  Fedorovich  from  behind, 
and  bangs  his  head  with  the  guitar.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  He  has  struck  my  head !  (Look- 
ing at  the  table.)  The  pen  is  not  writing  yet,  and  the 
paper  is  folded. 

Professor.  See  what  kind  of  paper  it  is,  and  be  quick 
about  it !  Apparently  a  double  force,  his  and  Grossmann's, 
is  producing  the  perturbations. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  (goes  out  with  the  paper,  and 
immediately  returns).  Extraordinary  !  This  paper  is  a 
contract  with  the  peasants,  which  I  declined  this  morn- 
ing to  sign,  and  which  I  gave  back  to  the  peasants. 
Apparently  he  wants  me  to  sign  it. 

Professor.     Of  course !     Of  course  !     You  ask  him  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Nicholas  !     Shall  I  do  so  ? 

(Tanya  raps  twice.) 

Professor.  Do  you  hear  ?  There  is  no  doubt  about 
it! 


284     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

(Leonid  Fedorovich  takes  the  pen  and  goes  out.  Tanya 
raps,  plays  on  the  guitar  and  accordion,  and 
again  creeps  under  the  sofa.  Leonid  Fedorovich 
returns.     Semen  stretches  himself  and  coughs.) 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  He  is  waking  up.  May  I  light 
the  candles  ? 

Professor  (Jmrriedly).  Doctor,  doctor,  if  you  please, 
the  temperature  and  pulse !  You  will  see  that  there  will 
prove  to  be  a  rise. 

Leonid  Fedorovich  {lights  the  candles).  Well,  unbe- 
lievers ? 

Doctor  {going  up  to  Semen  and  putting  the  thermometer 
into  his  mouth).  Well,  my  good  fellow  ?  Have  you 
slept  well  ?  Put  this  in  your  mouth,  and  let  me  have 
your  hand  !     {Looks  at  his  watch.) 

Sakhatov  {shrugging  his  shoulders).  I  can  affirm  that 
the  medium  did  not  do  any  of  these  things.  But  the 
thread  ?    I  should  like  to  have  an  explanation  of  the  thread. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  The  thread,  the  thread  !  There 
were  more  serious  phenomena  than  that ! 

Sakhatov.  I  do  not  know.  But,  in  any  case,  je 
reserve  mon  opinion. 

Stout  Lady  {to  Sakhatov).  How  can  you  say :  Je 
reserve  mon  opinion  ?  And  what  about  the  baby  with 
the  wings  ?  Did  you  not  see  him  ?  At  first  I  thought 
I  was  only  dreaming ;  but  later  it  was  as  clear,  as  clear, 
as  though  he  were  alive  — 

Sakhatov.  I  can  speak  only  of  what  I  have  seen.  I 
did  not  see  that,  I  did  not. 

Stout  Lady.  Well !  It  was  so  plain.  On  the  left 
side  the  monk  in  black  attire  leaned  down  over  him  — 

Sakhatov  {walking  away).     What  exaggeration ! 

Stout  Lady  {turning  to  the  Doctor).  You  must  have 
seen  it.  He  rose  on  your  side.  {Doctor,  paying  no 
attention  to  her,  continues  to  count  the  pulse.) 

Stout  Lady  {to  Grossmann).     And  there  was  a  light 


THE  FEUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     285 

from  him,  especially  around  the  face.     And  his  expression 
was  so  gentle,  so  truly  angelic  !     (Smiles  gently  herself.) 

Grossmann.  I  saw  a  phosphorescent  light  and  that 
objects  changed  places,  but  nothing  else. 

Stout  Lady.  Don't  say  that !  You  are  just  joking. 
You  do  so  because  you,  learned  men  of  the  school  of 
Charcot,  do  not  believe  in  the  life  after  death.  Nobody 
will  now  make  me  change  my  faith  in  a  future  life ! 
{Grossmann  walks  away  from  Iter.) 

Stout  Lady.  No,  you  may  say  what  you  please,  but 
this  is  one  of  the  happiest  moments  of  my  life.  When 
Sarasate  played,  and  this  one  —  Yes  !  (Nohody  pays 
any  attention  to  her.  She  goes  up  to  Semen.)  Tell  me,  my 
friend,  how  did  you  feel  ?     Was  it  hard  for  you  ? 

Semen  (laughing).     Yes,  madam. 

Stout  Lady.     Still,  you  could  stand  it  ? 

Semen.  Yes,  madam.  (To  Leonid  Fedorovich.)  May 
I  go? 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Go,  go ! 

Doctor  (to  Pi^ofessor).  The  pulse  is  the  same,  but  the 
temperature  is  lower. 

Professor.  Lower  ?  (In  thought  and  suddenly  mak- 
ing it  out.)  That  is  what  it  ought  to  be,  —  there  ought  to 
be  a  fall !  The  double  energy,  crossing,  ought  to  have  pro- 
duced something  in  the  nature  of  an  interference.    Yes,  yes. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     I  am  sorry  that  there  was  ^ 
no  complete  materialization,  but  still —     Ladies  and 
gentlemen,  please  go  to  the  drawing-room  ! 

Stout  Lady.  I  was  particularly  impressed  by 
the  flapping  of  his  wings,  and  I  could  see  liim  rise  in 
the  air.  [> 

Grossmann  (to  Sakhdtov).  If  one  were  to  stick 
to  hypnosis  alone,  one  might  produce  complete  epi- 
lepsy.    The  success  might  be  absolute. 

Sakhatov.  Interesting,  but  not  convincing,  — 
that  is  all  I  can  say ! 


&5 


ft- 


286      THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  XXI.     Leonid  F^dorovich  loith  the  paper.    Enter 

r^dor  Ivanych. 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  Well,  F(5dor,  it  was  a  remark- 
able stance !  It  now  turns  out  that  I  must  give  the 
peasants  the  land  upon  their  own  conditions. 

Fedor  Ivanycii.     Indeed ! 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  I  should  say  so!  (Shows  the 
paper  to  him.)  Just  think  of  it !  The  paper  which  I 
had  returned  to  them  was  thrown  down  on  the  table. 
I  signed  it. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     How  did  it  get  there  ? 

Leonid  Fedokovich.  It  just  got  there,  (Uxit,  Fedor 
Ivanych  follows  him  out.) 

Scene    XXII.     Tanya  (alone,  creeping  out  from  under- 
neath the  sofa,  and  laughing). 

Tanya.  My  saints  !  How  frightened  I  got  when  he 
caught  hold  of  the  thread !  (Squeaking.)  StiU,  it  has 
come  out  all  right,  —  he  has  signed  it ! 

Scene  XXIII.     Tanya  and  Grigori. 

Grigoki.     So  it  is  you  who  has  been  fooling  them  ? 

Tanya.     What  is  that  to  you  ? 

Grigori.  Do  you  suppose  the  lady  will  praise  you  for 
it  ?  No,  you  are  mistaken  !  Now  you  are  caught.  I 
will  tell  of  your  tricks,  if  you  will  not  do  as  I  want 
you  to. 

Tanya.  I  will  not  do  as  you  want  me  to,  and  you 
won't  dare  to  do  anything  to  me. 

Curtain. 


ACT   IV. 

The  theatre  represents  the  scene  of  the  First  Act. 

Scene  I.     Two  footmen  in  liveries,  F^dor  Ivanych,  and 

Grigdri. 

First  Footman  {with  gray  side-whiskers).  You  are  the 
third  to-day.  I  am  glad  the  receptions  are  all  in  the  same 
part  of  the  city.     You  used  to  have  them  on  Thursdays. 

Fedoe  Ivanych.  Then  we  changed  it  to  Saturday,  so 
as  to  have  it  on  the  same  day  with  the  Goldvkins,  and 
with  Grade- von-Grabe  — 

Second  Footman.  It  is  so  nice  at  the  Shcherbakovs : 
the  lackeys  are  treated  as  though  there  were  a  ball  there. 

Scene  II.  The  same.  The  Princess  and  her  Daughter 
descend  the  stairs.  Betsy  sees  them  off.  The  Prin- 
cess looks  into  a  note-hook  and  at  the  clock,  and  sits 
down  on  the  clothes-chest.  Grigdri  piUs  on  her  over- 
shoes. 

Young  Princess.  Yes,  be  sure  and  come!  If  you 
don't  come,  and  Dodo  does  not,  —  there  will  nothing 
come  of  it. 

Betsy.  I  do  not  know.  I  must  go  to  the  Shubins 
anyway.     Then  comes  the  rehearsal. 

Young  Princess.  You  will  have  time.  Do  come! 
Ne  nous  fais  pas  faux  bond  !  F^dya  and  Coco  will  be 
there. 

Betsy.     J 'en  ai  par  dessus  la  tete  de  voire  Coco. 

287 


288     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Young  Pkincess.     I  thought  I  should  find  him  here. 

Ordinairemcnt  il  est  d'une  exactitude. 

Betsy.     He  certainly  will  be  here. 

Young  Pkincess.  When  I  see  him  with  you,  I  always 
think  that  he  has  just  proposed  to  you,  or  that  he  will 
do  so  in  a  minute. 

Betsy.  I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  go  through  it.  It  is 
so  unpleasant ! 

Young  Princess.     Poor  Coco !     He  is  so  in  love  ! 

Betsy.     Cessez,  les  gens  ! 

{Young  Princess  sits  down  on  the  sofa,  speaking  in 
a  ivhisper.     Grigori  puts  on  her  overshoes.) 

Young  Princess.     Good-bye  until  evening  ! 

Betsy.     I  will  try. 

Princess.  Tell  your  papa  that  I  do  not  believe  a  thing, 
but  that  I  will  come  to  see  his  new  medium,  if  he  will 
let  me  know  when.  Good-bye,  ma  toute  belle  !  {Kisses 
her  and  exit  with  Young  Princess.     Betsy  goes  upstairs.) 

Scene  III,     The    two    footmen,    F^dor    Ivanych,    and 

Grigori. 

Grigori.  I  do  not  like  to  put  overshoes  on  old  women : 
they  don't  bend,  and  they  can't  see  anything,  because  their 
bellies  are  so  large,  and  so  they  keep  sticking  their  feet  any- 
where but  into  the  overshoes.  It  is  quite  different  with  a 
young  woman  :  it  is  pleasant  to  take  her  foot  into  the  hand. 

Second  Footman.     How  dainty  he  is  ! 

First  Lackey.  It  is  not  for  people  of  our  class  to  be 
dainty. 

Grigori.  Why  should  we  not  be  dainty  ?  Are  we 
not  human  beings  ?  They  think  we  do  not  understand 
anything :  when  they  began  to  talk,  they  looked  at  me, 
and  immediately  said  "  les  gens." 

Second  Footman.     What  does  that  mean  ? 

Grigori.     That  means  in  Eussian  :  "  Don't  say  it,  for 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     289 

they  will  understand  I"  They  say  the  same  thing  at 
dinner,  but  I  understand  it.  You  say  there  is  a  difier- 
ence,  but  I  say  there  is  none. 

First  Footman.  There  is  a  great  difference,  if  a  per- 
son understands  anything. 

Grigori.  There  is  no  difference  whatsoever.  To-day 
I  am  a  lackey,  and  to-morrow  I  may  be  living  as  well 
as  they.  Fine  women  sometimes  marry  lackeys :  such 
things  have  happened.  I  will  go  and  take  a  smoke. 
(Bxit) 

Scene  IV.     The  same,  without  Grigori, 

Second  Footman.  That  young  fellow  of  yours  is  a 
bold  chap. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  a  worthless  lad  and  unfit  for  serv- 
ice :  he  has  served  in  an  office,  and  that  has  spoiled  him. 
I  advised  against  taking  him,  but  the  lady  wanted  him 
because  he  makes  such  a  fine  appearance  in  the  carriage. 

First  Footman.  I  should  like  to  see  him  serving 
under  our  count:  he  would  straighten  him  out  in  no 
time.  Oh,  how  he  hates  such  sleek  fellows !  If  you  are 
a  lackey,  stay  a  lackey,  and  do  justice  to  your  calling ! 
This  pride  does  not  become  him. 

Scene    V.      The   same.      Petrishchev   runs   down-stairs 
and  takes  out  a  cigarette. 

Petrishchev  {in  thought).  Yes,  yes.  No  "  ta  "  —  my 
second.  No-ta-ry.  My  whole  —  Yes,  yes.  ( Coco  Klin- 
gen,  in  eye-glasses,  enters,  and  goes  up  to  him.)  Ah,  Coco- 
late,  Choco-late  !     Where  do  you  come  from  ? 

Coco  Klingen.  From  the  Shcherbakovs.  Will  you 
never  stop  your  foohshness  ? 

Petrishchev.  Just  listen  to  my  charade  :  My  first  is 
no  "  rial "  ;  no  "  ta  "  —  my  second  ;  my  whole  is  quite 
contrary. 


290     THE  FRUITS  OP  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Coco  Klingen.  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know,  and  I 
have  no  time. 

Petkishchev.     Where  are  you  going  ? 

Coco  Klingen.  Where  am  I  going  ?  To  the  Ivins, 
to  practise  singing.  Then  to  the  Shubins,  and  then  to  the 
rehearsal.     Aren't  you  going  to  be  there  ? 

Petrishchev.  Of  course  I  will.  I  wiU  be  at  the 
re-hearse-al  and  at  the  re-burial.  I  was  a  savage  before, 
and  now  I  am  both  a  savage  and  a  general. 

Coco  Klingen.     Well,  how  was  the  stance  last  night  ? 

Petrishchev.  It  was  killing !  There  was  a  peasant 
there ;  but  the  main  thing  is  it  was  all  in  the  dark. 
Vovo  mewled  like  a  baby,  the  professor  explained,  and 
Marya  Vasilevna  made  glosses.  It  was  great  fun  !  What 
a  pity  you  were  not  there ! 

Coco  Klingen.  I  am  afraid,  mon  cher.  You  manage 
to  keep  out  of  trouble  with  all  your  jokes ;  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  moment  I  say  a  word,  they  will  make  me 
out  as  having  proposed.  Et  fa  ne  m'arrange  pas  du  tout, 
du  tout.     Mais  du  tout,  du  tout  ! 

Petrishchev.  You  make  a  proposition  with  a  predi- 
cate, and  nothing  will  happen  to  you.  Go  in  to  Vovo's, 
and  we  will  go  together  to  the  re-burial. 

Coco  Klingen.  I  can't  understand  how  you  can  keep 
company  with  such  an  ass.  He  is  so  stupid,  —  such  a 
real  good-for-nothing  ! 

Petrishchev.  I  love  him.  I  love  Vovo,  but  "  with  a 
strange  love,"  "  to  him  the  people's  path  will  not  be  over- 
grown—  "  (Goes  into  Vasili  Leonidych's  room.) 

Scene  VI.     The  two  lackeys,  F^dor  Ivanych,  a7id  Coco 
Klingen.     Betsy  sees  Lady  off 

(Coco  makes  a  deep  bow.) 

Betsy  (shakes  his  head  sidewise.  To  the  Lady). 
Are  you  not  acquainted  ? 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     291 

Lady.     No. 

Betsy.  Baron  Klingen  —  Wliy  were  you  not  here 
yesterday  ? 

Coco  Klingen.     I  could  not,  —  I  was  so  busy. 
Betsy.      What     a     pity !      It    was     so     interesting. 
{Laughing.)      You   ought  to  have   seen    what    manifes- 
tations there  were  !     Well,  how  is   our  charade   getting 
on  ? 

Coco  Klingen.  Oh,  yes !  The  verses  for  my  second 
are  ready.  Nik  has  made  them  up,  and  I  have  added  the 
music. 

Betsy.     How  is  it,  how  ?     Let  me  hear  them  ! 
Coco  Klingen.     iVature  is  so  beautiful 

Where  bawawas  native  are, 
Nanna,  Nanna  !     Na,  na,  na  i 
Lady.     My  second  is  na,  and  what  is  my  first  ? 
Coco  Klingen.     My  first  is  Are,  the  name  of  a  savage 
woman. 

Betsv.     Are,  you  see,  is  a  savage,  who  wants  to  eat 
up  the  object  of  her  love.     {Laughs  loud.)     She  walks 
around,  and  pines,  and  sings. 
Ah,  my  appetite ! 
Coco  Klingen  {interrupting  her). 

If  I  but  had  a  bite  ! 
Betsy  {continues). 

I  want  some  one  to  eat, 
I  walk  with  saddened  mind  — 
Coco  Klingen. 

No  person  do  I  find  — 
Betsy. 

No  flesh  to  chew,  no  meat — 
Coco  Klingen. 

Behold,  a  raft  I  see  — 
Betsy. 

It  is  swimming  to  me, 
On  it  two  generals  are  — 


292     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Coco  Klingen. 

Generals  we  are, 
Fate  has  brought  us  from  afar, 
Fate  has  brought  us,  —  here  we  are ! 
And  again  the  refrain  : 

Fate  has  brought  us  from  afar, 
Fate  has  brought  us,  —  here  we  are  ! 
Lady.     Charmant ! 

Betsy.     Do  you  perceive  how  stupid  it  is  ? 
Coco  Klingen.     But  that  is  where  the  charm  of  it  is  ! 
Lady.     Who  is  Are  ? 

Betsy.  I.  I  have  had  a  costume  made,  but  mamma 
says  it  is  indecent.  It  is  not  a  bit  more  indecent  than  a 
ball-dress.  {To  Fedor  Ivdnych.)  Well,  is  the  man  here 
from  Bourdier  ? 

Fedor  Iyanych.     Yes,  he  is  sitting  in  the  kitchen. 
Lady.     Well,  and  how  is  the  Arena  going  to  be  ? 
Betsy.     You  will  see.     I  do  not  wish  to  spoil  your 
pleasure.     Au  revoir. 

Lady.  Good-bye!  (Tlieij  bow  to  each  other.  Lady 
exit.) 

Betsy  (to  Coco  Klingen).  Let  us  go  to  mamma! 
{Betsy  and  Coco  Klingen  ascend  the  stairs.) 

Scene  VIL  F^dor  Ivanych,  the  two  lackeys,  and  Yakov 
{comes  out  of  the  butler's  roorn,  vdth  a  tray,  on  which 
there  are  glasses  of  tea  and  pastry.  Walks  through 
the  anteroom,  out  of  breath). 

Yakov  {to  the  lackeys).  My  regards  to  you,  my  regards  ! 

{TJie  lackeys  bow.) 

Yakov  {to  Fedor  Ivdnych).  Can't  you  tell  Grigori  Mi- 
khaylych  to  give  me  a  lift  ?  Getting  things  ready  has 
tired  me  out.     {Exit.) 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     293 


Scene  VIII.     The  same,  without  Yakov. 

FiKST  Footman.     He  is  a  hard-working  man  ! 

Fedok  Ivanych.  He  is  a  good  man,  but  the  lady 
does  not  hke  him.  She  says  he  does  not  make  a 
good  appearance.  They  accused  him  yesterday  of 
letting  some  peasants  into  the  kitchen,  and  I  am  afraid 
they  will  discharge  him.  And  he  is  such  a  nice 
fellow. 

Second  Footman.     What  peasants  ? 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Some  peasants  from  our  Kursk  vil- 
lage came  to  buy  some  land.  It  was  night-time,  and  they 
are  his  countrymen.  One  of  them  is  also  the  father  of 
the  peasant  of  the  pantry.  So  they  took  them  to  the 
kitchen.  They  happened  to  have  mind-reading  here  last 
night :  they  hid  something  in  the  kitcheu.  Then  all  the 
company  went  into  the  kitchen,  and  there  the  lady 
saw  them.  Well,  it  was  terrible !  "  These  people," 
says  she,  "  might  be  infected,  and  you  let  them  stay 
in  the  kitchen  I "  She  is  dreadfully  afraid  of  the 
infection. 


Scene  IX.     The  same  and  Grigdri. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Go,  Grigori,  and  help  Yakov  Ivanych, 
while  I  will  stay  here  by  myself.  He  can't  get  it  done 
himseK. 

Grigori.  He  can't  get  it  done  because  he  is  awkward. 
{Exit.) 

Scene  X.     The  same,  without  Grigdri. 

First    Footman.  A  new  fashion    they  have  started 

with  this  infection  !  And  so  your  lady  is  afraid  of  it, 
too? 

Fedor   Ivanych.  She  is  afraid  of  it  worse  than  of 


294     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

fire.    We  are  doing  nothing  now  but  fumigating,  washing, 
and  sprinkling. 

First  rooTMAN.  I  thought  I  smelled  something 
strong.  (With  animation.)  It  is  a  perfect  shame  how 
they  carry  on  with  these  infections.  Perfectly  disgrace- 
ful !  They  have  forgotten  God.  The  daughter  of  Princess 
Mosdlov,  the  sister  of  our  master,  died.  What  do  you 
suppose  they  did  ?  Neither  father  nor  mother  came  into 
the  room  to  bid  her  farewell.  And  the  daughter  kept 
weeping  and  begging  for  her  parents  to  tell  them  good-bye, 
but  they  did  not  go  in.  The  doctor  had  discovered  some 
kind  of  an  infection.  And  yet  the  chambermaid  and  a 
nurse  attended  to  her,  and  they  are  alive  ! 

Scene  XI.     The  same,  Vasili  Leonidych,  and  Petrishchev 

(coming  out  of  the  door  tvith  cigarettes). 

Petrishchev.  Let  us  go  !  I  just  want  to  fetch  Coco- 
late  —  Chocolate. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Your  Cocolate  is  a  stupid !  Let 
me  tell  you:  I  can't  bear  him.  He  is  such  a  brainless 
fellow,  a  genuine  loafer !  He  does  nothing  but  loaf.  Ah, 
what? 

Petrishchev.  Wait,  anyway !  I  want  to  tell  him 
good-bye. 

Vasili  Leonidych.  All  right.  I  will  go  and  take  a 
look  in  the  coachman's  room.  One  of  the  dogs  is  so 
vicious  that  the  coachman  says  he  has  almost  eaten  him 
up.     Ah,  what  ? 

Petrishchev.  Who  has  eaten  whom?  Do  you 
mean  to  tell  me  that  the  coachman  has  eaten  up  the 
dog  ? 

Vasili  Leonidych.  Your  eternal  jokes —  (Puts  on 
his  wraps  and  exit.) 

Petrishchev  (in  thought).  Ma-no-rial,  no-ta-ry  — 
Yes,  yes.     (Goes  iip-stairs.) 


THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT     295 

Scene  XII.  The  two  footmen,  F^dor  Ivanych,  and 
Yakov  (ivho  runs  over  the  stage  in  the  beginning 
and  at  the  end  of  the  scene). 

Fedor  Ivanych  (to  Ydkov).     What  is  it  again  ? 

Yakov.  I  did  not  bring  the  sandwiches !  I  said  — 
{Exit) 

Second  Footman.  Then  our  young  master  fell  ill,  so 
they  took  him  with  a  nurse  to  a  hotel,  and  there  he  died 
without  his  mother. 

First  Footman.  They  are  forgetting  God ;  but  I 
think  you  can't  get  away  from  God. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  I  thiuk  so  myseK.  {Ydkov  runs  up- 
stairs with  the  sandwiches.) 

First  Footman.  You  must  consider  that  if  you  are  to 
be  afraid  of  everything,  you  will  have  to  shut  yourself  up 
within  four  walls,  as  in  a  prison,  and  stay  there. 

Scene  XIII.    The  same  and  Tanya,  then  Yakov. 

Tanya  (bowing  to  the  footmen).  Good  evening!  {The 
footmen  how.) 

Tanya.    F^dor  Ivanych,  I  have  a  word  or  two  to  tell  you. 

Fedor  Ivanych.    Well,  what  is  it  ? 

Tanya.    Fedor  Ivanych,  the  peasants  have  come  back  — 

Fedor  Ivanych.  What  of  it?  I  gave  the  paper  to 
Sem^n  — 

TxVNYA.  I  gave  them  the  paper.  I  can't  tell  you  how 
thankful  they  are.  Now  they  ask  that  their  money  be 
accepted. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     Where  are  they  ? 

Tanya.    They  are  standing  near  the  porch. 

F^DOR  Ivanych.    Well,  I  will  report  it. 

Tanya.  I,  too,  want  to  ask  you  for  something,  dear 
F^dor  Ivanych. 

Fedor  Ivanych.    What  is  it  ? 


296     THE  FKUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Tanya.  Fedor  Ivauych,  I  can't  stay  here  any  longer. 
Will  you  ask  for  my  dismissal  ?    (  Ydkov  running  in.) 

Fedor  Ivanych  {to  Ydkov).     What  do  you  want  ? 

Yakov.    Another  samovar,  and  some  oranges. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Ask  the  housekeeper  for  them ! 
(Ydkov  runs  away.) 

Fedor  Ivanych.    What  is  that  for? 

Tanya.    Why,  you  know  what  I  want  to  do ! 

Yakov  {running  in).  There  are  not  enough  oranges 
there. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Serve  as  many  as  there  are.  {Ydkov 
runs  aivay.)  You  have  chosen  a  bad  time :  you  see  what 
an  upheaval  there  is  here  now  — 

Tanya.  You  know  yourself,  F^dor  Ivanych,  that  there 
will  be  no  end  to  this  upheaval,  no  matter  how  long  I  may 
wait,  and  what  I  am  about  to  do  is  for  a  lifetime  —  You, 
dear  F^dor  Ivanych,  have  already  done  me  a  great  favour. 
Be  now  again  in  place  of  my  own  father,  and  choose  the 
right  time  and  tell  the  master  about  it.  Or  else  he  will 
get  angry,  and  will  not  let  me  have  my  papers. 

Fedor  Ivanych.     You  are  in  a  terrible  hurry  ! 

Tanya.  Everything  has  been  settled,  F^dor  Ivanych, 
and  I  should  like  to  go  back  to  godmother,  and  get  ready. 
The  wedding  is  to  be  after  Quasimodo  Sunday.  Do  tell 
him,  Fedor  Ivanych ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Go  now,  —  this  is  not  the  place  for 
you  just  now. 

{An  elderly  gentleman  comes  down-stairs  and,  with- 
out saying  a  word,  goes  away  with  Second 
Footman.        Tanya  exit.) 

Scene  XIV.     FMor  Ivanych,  First  Footman,  and  Yakov 

{who  enters). 

Yakov.  FMor  Ivauych,  this  is  a  burning  shame ! 
She  wants  to  discharge  me.     She  says :  "  You  are  bun- 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  297 

gling  everything,  and  you  do  not  attend  to  Fifi,  and  you 
took  the  peasants  to  the  kitchen  against  my  order."  You 
know  yourself  that  I  did  not  know  anything  about  it. 
Tatyana  told  me  to  take  them  to  the  kitchen,  and  I  did 
not  know  by  whose  order  it  was. 

Fedoe  Ivanych.     Did  she  talk  to  you  about  it  ? 

Yakov.  This  very  minute.  F^dor  Ivanych,  intercede 
for  me !  My  family  has  just  been  getting  on  its  legs, 
and  if  I  should  lose  this  place,  who  knows  when  I  should 
find  another  ?    Ft^dor  Ivanych,  do  me  the  favour  ! 

Scene  XV.  Fedor  Ivanych,  First  Footman,  and  Anna 
Pavlovna  seeing  off  Old  Countess,  with  false  teeth 
and  hair.  First  Footman  puts  the  wraps  on  the 
Countess. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Of  course.     I  am  truly  touched. 

Countess.  If  it  were  not  for  my  ill  health,  I  should 
come  to  see  you  more  frequently. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Eeally,  you  ought  to  try  Peter  Pe- 
trovich.  He  is  rough,  but  no  one  will  soothe  you  better. 
Everything  is  so  simple  and  clear  with  him. 

Countess.     No,  I  am  used  to  my  own  doctor. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Look  out ! 

Countess.     Merci,  milk  fois  merci  ! 

Scene  XVI.  The  same  and  Grigori  {dishevelled,  in  agita- 
tion, runs  out  from  the  butlers  room.  Behind  him  is 
seen  Semen). 

Semen.     You  leave  her  alone  ! 

Grigori.  I  will  teach  you,  rascal,  how  to  fight !  You 
good-for-notliing ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  What  is  this?  Are  you  in  an 
inn  ? 

Gkigori.     I  can't  stand  this  coarse  peasant. 


298     THE  FRUITS  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  are  crazy !  Don't  you  see  ? 
{To  the  Countess.)  Merci,  mille  fois  merci  !  A  mardi  ! 
{Countess  and  First  Footman  exeunt.) 

Scene  XVIL     F^dor  Ivanych,  Anna  Pavlovna,  Grig6ri, 

and  Sem^n. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Grigori).     What  is  this  ? 

Gpjgori.  Although  I  am  only  a  lackey,  I  have  my 
pride,  and  I  will  not  allow  any  peasant  to  push  me. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     But  what  has  happened  ? 

Grigori.  Sem^n  has  become  stuck  up  from  having 
sat  with  gentlemen,  and  now  he  fights. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     What  is  it  ?     For  what  ? 

Grigorl     God  knows. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Semen).     What  does  this  mean  ? 

Semen.     Let  him  keep  away  from  her ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.     What  has  happened  between  you  ? 

Semen  {smiling).  It  is  hke  this :  he  keeps  grabbing 
chambermaid  Tanya,  and  she  does  not  want  him  to  do  it. 
So  I  pushed  him  a  little  aside. 

Grigori.  I  should  say  he  did  push  me  aside !  He 
nearly  broke  my  ribs.  He  has  torn  my  dress  coat.  He 
said :  "  My  strength  of  yesterday  has  come  back  to  me," 
and  he  began  to  choke  me. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Semen).  How  dare  you  fight  in 
my  house  ? 

F^DOR  Ivanych.  Permit  me  to  inform  you,  Anna 
Pavlovna,  that  Sem^n  has  certain  feelings  for  Tanya,  and 
as  they  are  engaged  to  be  married,  and  Grigori  —  I  must 
tell  you  the  truth  —  acts  badly  and  dishonourably,  I 
suppose,  Sem^n  would  not  stand  his  behaviour. 

Grigori.  Not  at  all.  It  is  all  because  they  are  angry, 
knowing  that  I  am  up  to  their  trickery. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     What  trickery  ? 

Grigori.     At  the  stance.     AU  the  tricks  of  last  night 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  299 

were  not  done  by  Sem^n,  but  by  Tatyana.  I  saw  her 
myseK  creeping  out  from  under  the  sofa. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  What  ?  She  crept  out  from  under 
the  sofa  ? 

Grigori.  My  word  of  honour.  She  also  brought  the 
paper  and  threw  it  on  the  table.  If  it  had  not  been  for 
her,  the  paper  would  not  have  been  signed,  and  the  land 
would  not  have  been  sold  to  them. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     You  saw  it  yourself  ? 

Grigori.  With  my  own  eyes.  Have  her  come  in, 
and  she  will  not  deny  it. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Call  her  in  !     {Grigori  exit.) 

Scene  XVIII.  The  same,  without  Grigori.  Noise  behind 
the  scenes ;  the  Porter's  voice :  "  You  can't  get  in  ! 
Stop  there ! "  TJie  Porter  aiopears,  and  the  three 
peasants  break  in,  past  him.  Second  Peasant  in  front. 
Third  Peasant  stumbles,  falls,  and  clasps  his  nose. 

Porter.     You  can't  go  there  !     Get  out ! 

Second  Peasant.  No  harm  is  meant !  We  are  not  up 
to  any  trouble.     We  want  to  give  him  the  money. 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  since  by  the  signature  of 
the  application  of  the  hand  our  affair  has  come  into  a 
finishing,  we  wish  to  present  the  money  with  our  gratitude. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Wait,  wait !  Don't  thank  !  It  was 
all  a  trick.  It  is  not  ended  yet.  The  land  is  not  sold 
yet,     Leonid  !     Call  Leonid  F^dorovich  !     {Porter  exit.) 

Scene  XIX.    The  same  and  Leonid  F^dorovich,  wJio,  seeing 
the  peasants  and  Anna  Pavlovna,  loants  to  withdraw. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  No,  no,  please  come  here !  I  told 
you  that  the  land  must  not  be  sold  with  an  outstanding 
indebtedness,  and  everybody  else  told  you  so.  And  then 
you  are  deceived  like  a  most  stupid  man. 


300  THE    FEUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  That  is,  how  ?  I  do  not  under- 
stand what  deception  you  are  speaking  about. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed !  You 
have  gray  hair,  and  yet  they  deceive  you  hke  a  boy  and 
make  fun  of  you.  You  begrudge  your  son  some  paltry 
three  hundred  roubles  to  help  him  in  his  social  standing, 
and  you  yourself  are  cheated  out  of  thousands  like  the 
greatest  fool. 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Annette,  calm  yourself ! 

First  Peasant.  We  are  only  in  the  reception  of  the 
sum,  so  to  speak  — 

Third  Peasant  (draws  out  the  money).  Send  us  away, 
for  Christ's  sake ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Wait,  wait ! 

Scene  XX.     The  same,  Grigdri,  and  Tanya. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {sternly  to  Tanya).  Were  you  in 
the  drawing-room  last  night  during  the  seance  ? 

{Tanya,    sighing,    looks    at    Fedor    Ivdnych,    Leonid 
Fedorovicli,  and  Semen.) 

Grigori.  You  needn't  beat  around  the  bush.  I  saw 
you  there  myself  — 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Speak  !  Were  you  there  ?  I  know 
everything,  so  you  had  better  confess.  1  only  want  to 
accuse  him  (jiointing  to  Leonid,  Fedorovich)  —  the  master. 
Did  you  throw  the  paper  on  the  table  ? 

Tanya.  I  do  not  know  what  to  answer,  except  to  ask 
you  to  let  me  go  home. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {to  Leonid  Fedorovich).  Now,  you 
see,  they  have  been  fooling  you. 

Scene  XXI.     The  same.     Enter  Betsy  in  the  beginning 
of  the  scene  and  stands  unnoticed. 

Tanya.     Let  me  go,  Anna  Pavlovna  ! 

Anna   Pavlovna.      No,   my   dear !     You    may   have 


THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT  301 

caused   a  loss   of  several  thousand.     He  sold  the  land 
which  ought  not  to  have  been  sold. 

Tanya.     Let  me  go,  Anna  Pavlovna ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  No,  you  will  have  to  answer.  You 
can't  cheat  like  that.  I  will  take  you  before  a  justice  of 
the  peace. 

Betsy  {stepping  forivard).  Let  her  go,  mother !  If 
you  wish  to  sue  her,  you  will  have  to  sue  me,  too :  I  did 
it  all  with  her  last  night. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  Of  course,  if  you  had  anything  to 
do  with  it,  it  could  have  been  nothing  but  the  nastiest 
thing. 

Scene  XXTI.     The  same  and  Professor. 

Professor.  Good  day,  Anna  Pavlovna !  Good  day, 
madam !  I  am  bringing  you,  Leonid  F^dorovich,  the 
report  of  the  thirteenth  meeting  of  the  spiritualists  at 
Chicago.     Schmidt  delivered  a  wonderful  speech  ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.     Ah,  that  will  be  interesting  ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  I  will  tell  you  something  which  is 
more  interesting  still.  It  turns  out  that  this  girl  has  been 
foohng  you  and  my  husband.  Betsy  takes  it  upon  her- 
self, but  that  is  only  to  tease  me ;  it  was  really  this 
ilhterate  girl  who  has  been  fooling  you,  and  you  believed  it 
all.  There  were  none  of  your  mediumistic  phenomena  last 
night,  but  this  girl  here  [pointing  to  Tanya)  has  done  it  all. 

Professor  (angrily).     What  do  you  mean  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  I  mean  that  it  was  she  who  played  the 
guitar  in  the  dark,  and  who  struck  my  husband  on  the  head, 
and  who  did  all  that  foolishness.     She  has  just  confessed. 

Professor  {smiling).     What  does  that  prove  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  It  proves  that  your  mediumism  is 
nonsense,  that  is  what  it  proves  ! 

Professor.  Because  this  girl  wanted  to  cheat,  medi- 
umism is  nonsense,  as  you  have  deigned  to  express  your- 
self ?     {Smiling.)     A  strange  conclusion !     It  may  well 


302  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

be  that  this  girl  wanted  to  cheat :  this  often  happens  ;  and 
it  may  be  that  she  really  did  do  something  ;  but  what  she 
did,  she  did,  and  that  which  was  a  manifestation  of  medi- 
umistic  energy  was  a  manifestation  of  mediumistic  energy. 
It  is  even  very  probable  that  that  which  this  girl  did, 
evoked,  solicitated,  so  to  speak,  the  manifestation  of 
mediumistic  energy,  and  gave  it  definite  form. 

Anna  Pavlovna.     Another  lecture ! 

Professor  {sternly).  You  say,  Anna  Pavlovna,  that 
this  girl,  and  maybe  this  charming  young  lady,  did  some- 
thing ;  but  the  light  which  we  all  saw,  and  in  the  first 
case  the  fall,  and  in  the  second  the  rise  of  the  temperature, 
and  Grossmann's  agitation  and  vibration,  —  well,  did  the 
girl  do  that,  too  ?  But  these  are  facts,  facts,  Anna 
Pavlovna !  Anna  Pavlovna,  there  are  things  which  must 
be  investigated  and  fully  understood  in  order  to  speak  of 
them,  —  things  which  are  too  serious,  too  serious  — 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  And  the  child  whom  Mdrya 
Vasilevna  saw  plainly  ?  I  myself  saw  it.  This  girl  could 
not  do  that ! 

Anna  Pavlovna.  You  think  that  you  are  clever  ? 
But  I  tell  you  you  are  a  fool ! 

Leonid  Fedorovich.  Well,  I  will  go  away  —  Aleksy^y 
Vladimirovich,  come  to  my  room.     (^Goes  into  the  cabinet.) 

Professor  {shrugging  his  shoulders,  follows  him).  Oh, 
how  far  removed  from  Europe  we  still  are ! 

Scene  XXIII.  Anna  Pavlovna,  three  peasants,  FMor 
Ivanych,  Tanya,  Betsy,  Grigori,  Sem^n,  and  Yakov 
(e7iter). 

Anna  Pavlovna  (to  retreating  Leonid  Fedorovich). 
They  have  cheated  him  like  a  fool,  and  he  does  not  see 
anything.     {To  Yako2\)     What  do  you  want ? 

Yakov.     For  how  many  persons  shall  I  set  the  table  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.     For  how  many  ?     F^dor  Ivanych, 


THE    FKUITS    OF   ENLIGHTENMENT  303 

take  the  silver  away  from  him  !  Out  with  him  !  He  is 
the  cause  of  everythiug.  This  man  will  bring  me  to  the 
grave.  Yesterday  he  came  very  near  starving  my  dog, 
which  had  done  him  no  harm.  He  is  not  satisfied  with 
that.  Last  night  he  took  the  iufected  peasants  to  the 
kitchen,  and  now  they  are  here  again.  He  is  the  cause 
of  everything.  Out  with  him,  this  very  minute !  Dis- 
charge him,  discharge  him!  {To  Semen.)  If  you  ever 
dare  to  make  a  noise  in  my  house  again,  I  will  teach  you  ! 

Second  Peasant.  If  he  is  not  a  good  man,  don't  keep 
him !     Discharge  him,  and  that  will  be  the  end  of  it. 

Anna  Pavlovna  {listening  to  him,  looks  at  the  Third 
Peasant).  Look  there !  He  has  an  eruption  on  his  nose, 
an  eruption !  He  is  a  sick  man,  a  reservoir  of  infection  ! 
I  told  you  yesterday  not  to  let  them  in,  and  they  are  here 
again.     Drive  them  out ! 

Fed  OR  IvANYGH.  Well,  will  you  not  order  me  to 
accept  their  money  ? 

Anna  Pavlovna.  The  money  ?  Take  the  money,  but 
drive  them  out  this  very  minute,  particularly  that  sick 
man  !     He  is  all  rotten  I 

Third  Peasant.  In  vain  do  you  say  this,  motherkin, 
in  vain !  Let  me  say,  ask  my  old  woman  and  she  will 
tell  you  that  I  am  not  rotten.     I  am  like  glass,  let  me  say. 

Anna  Pavlovna.  He  dares  discuss  it.  Out  with 
them,  out  with  them !  They  want  to  spite  me !  No, 
I  cannot  stand  it,  I  cannot !  Send  for  Peter  Petrovich. 
{Runs  out,  sobbing.      Ydkov  and  Grigori  exeunt.) 

Scene  XXIV.    The  same,  without  Anna  Pavlovna,  Ydkov, 

and  Grigori. 

Tanya  {to  Betsy).  My  dear  Lizav^ta  Leonidovna,  what 
shall  I  do  now  ? 

Betsy.  Nothing,  nothing.  Go  with  them  to  the  vil- 
lage !     I  will  arrange  it  all.     {Exit.) 


304  THE    FRUITS    OF    ENLIGHTENMENT 

Scene  XXV.    F^dor  Iv^nych,  three  peasants,  Tanya,  and 

Porter. 

First  Peasant.  How  is  it,  honourable  man,  about  the 
reception  of  the  sum  ? 

Second  Peasant.     Let  us  depart! 

Third  Peasant  (pushes  forward  with  the  money).  If 
I  had  known  this,  I  would  never  have  undertaken  it. 
This  will  dry  me  up  worse  than  consumption. 

Fedor  Ivanych  (to  Porter).  Take  them  to  my 
room.  I  have  au  abacus  there.  There  I  will  receive  it. 
Go,  go ! 

Porter.     Come,  come ! 

Fedor  Ivanych.  Thank  Tanya  for  it !  If  it  had  not 
been  for  her,  you  would  not  have  the  land  now. 

First  Peasant.  In  rivality,  as  she  made  the  preposi- 
tion, just  so  she  advanced  it  into  motion. 

Third  Peasant.  She  has  made  men  of  us.  What 
should  we  have  done  without  it  ?  The  land  is  small, 
there  is  not  room  enough  to  drive  out  a  cow,  nay,  let  me 
say,  not  even  a  chick.  Good-bye,  clever  girl !  When 
you  come  to  the  village,  you  will  eat  honey  with  us. 

Second  Peasant.  When  I  get  home,  I  will  get  ready 
for  the  wedding,  and  I  will  brew  the  beer.  Be  sure  and 
come  soon  ! 

Tanya.  I  will,  I  will !  {Squeaking.)  Sem^n,  isn't  it 
nice  ?     (Peasants  exeunt.) 

Scene  XXVI.     F(^dor  Ivanych,  Tanya,  and  Semt^n. 

Fedor  Ivanych.  God  be  with  you  !  Remember  this, 
Tanya !  When  you  have  your  own  house,  I  will  come  to 
be  your  guest.     Will  you  receive  me  ? 

Tanya.     My  dear  F^dor  Ivanych,  I  will  receive  you 
like  a  father !     (Embraces  and  kisses  him.) 
,  Curtain. 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

1889 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 


"  But  I  say  unto  you,  That  whosoever  looketh  on  a 
woman  to  lust  after  her  hath  committed  adultery  with  her 
already  in  his  heart  "  (Matt.  v.  28). 

"  His  disciples  say  unto  him,  If  the  case  of  the  man  be  so 
with  his  wife,  it  is  not  good  to  marry.  But  he  said  unto 
them,  All  men  cannot  receive  this  saying,  save  they  to  whom 
it  is  given"  (Matt.  xx.  10-11). 


This  was  early  in  the  spring.  We  had  been  travelling 
for  two  days.  People  who  were  going  but  a  short  dis- 
tance kept  coming  in  and  going  out  of  the  car ;  but  three 
persons  travelled,  like  myself,  from  the  starting-point  of 
the  train :  a  plain-looking,  no  longer  young  lady,  with  a 
drawn  face,  dressed  in  a  semi-masculine  overcoat  and  cap, 
and  smokiug  cigarettes ;  her  acquaintance,  a  talkative 
man  of  about  forty,  in  fashionable  new  clothes ;  and  an- 
other, an  undersized  gentleman,  with  jerky  motions,  who 
kept  to  himself.  The  latter  w^as  not  old,  but  his  curly 
hair  was  apparently  prematurely  gray,  and  his  uncom- 
monly sparkling  eyes  rapidly  flitted  from  one  object  to 
another.  He  wore  an  old,  tailor-made  overcoat,  with  a 
curly  lamb-fur  collar,  and  a  tall  lamb-fur  cap.  Under 
his  overcoat,  whenever  he  unbuttoned  it,  could  be  seen 
the  national  sleeveless  coat  and  embroidered  shirt.  The 
peculiarity  of  this  gentleman  consisted  further  in  his  now 

307 


308  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

and  then  emitting  strange  sounds  which  resembled  a 
clearing  of  the  throat  or  a  jerky  laugh. 

This  gentleman  during  the  whole  journey  carefully 
avoided  conversing  and  becoming  acquainted  with  the 
passengers.  To  his  neighbours'  remarks  he  answered 
curtly,  or  he  read,  or  smoked,  looking  out  of  the  window, 
or,  fetching  some  provisions  out  of  his  old  bag,  drank 
tea  or  ate  a  lunch. 

I  thought  that  his  loneliness  weighed  upon  him,  and 
I  tried  several  times  to  start  a  conversation  with  him,  but 
every  time  when  our  eyes  met,  which  was  often,  because 
we  were  sitting  diagonally  opposite  each  other,  he  turned 
away  and  picked  up  a  book,  or  looked  out  of  the  window. 

During  a  stop,  in  the  evening  of  the  second  day,  at  a 
large  station,  this  nervous  gentleman  got  some  hot  water 
and  brewed  some  tea  for  himself,  while  the  gentleman  in 
the  fashionable  new  clothes,  —  a  lawyer,  as  I  learned 
later,  —  with  his  neighbour,  the  smoking  lady  in  the 
semi-masculine  overcoat,  went  to  drink  tea  at  the  station. 

During  the  absence  of  the  gentleman  and  the  lady,  a 
few  new  persons  entered  our  car  ;  among  them  was  a  tall, 
cleanly  shaven,  wrinkled  old  man,  apparently  a  merchant, 
in  a  fitchew-fur  coat  and  a  cloth  cap  with  an  immense 
visor.  The  merchant  sat  down  opposite  the  lady's  and 
the  lawyer's  places,  and  immediately  entered  into  a  con- 
versation with  a  young  man,  evidently  a  merchant's  clerk, 
who  had  also  entered  the  car  at  this  station. 

I  was  sitting  diagonally  across  from  them,  and,  as  the 
train  was  not  moving,  w^as  able  to  catch  bits  of  their  con- 
versation whenever  there  was  no  one  passing  between  us. 
The  merchant  informed  him  at  first  that  he  was  going  to 
his  estate,  which  was  but  one  station  away ;  then,  as  is 
always  the  case,  they  began  to  speak  about  prices  and 
about  trade,  and  about  business  in  Moscow  and  at  the 
Nizhni-Novgorod  Fair.  The  clerk  began  to  tell  about  the 
carousals  of  a   certain  rich    merchant,  whom  they  both 


THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA  309 

knew,  at  the  fair,  but  the  old  man  interrupted  him,  and 
himself  told  of  past  carousals  at  Kunavin,  in  which  he 
had  taken  part.  He  was  apparently  proud  of  the  part 
taken  by  him  in  them,  and  was  telling  with  obvious  joy 
how  once  he  and  this  acquEimtance  of  his  were  drunk  in 
Kunavin  and  did  somethiug  of  such  a  nature  that  it  was 
necessary  to  tell  it  in  a  whisper,  whereat  the  clerk  roared 
so  that  he  could  be  heard  through  the  whole  car,  and  the 
old  man  laughed,  displaying  his  yellow  teeth. 

As  I  did  not  expect  to  hear  anything  interesting,  I  got 
up  to  walk  up  and  down  the  platform  until  the  departure 
of  the  train.  I  met  the  lawyer  and  the  lady  in  the  door, 
who  were  with  animation  talking  about  something,  while 
making  for  the  car. 

"  You  will  have  no  time,"  the  affable  lawyer  said  to 
me.     "  The  second  bell  will  ring  in  a  minute." 

And  so  it  was.  I  had  not  reached  the  end  of  the  train 
when  the  bell  rang  out.  When  I  returned,  the  animated 
conversation  between  the  lady  and  the  lav»-yer  was  still 
in  progress.  The  old  merchant  sat  silently  opposite  them, 
sternly  looking  in  front  of  him,  and  now  and  then  disap- 
provingly gnashing  his  teeth. 

"  Then  she  franklv  informed  her  husband,"  the  lawyer 
was  saying,  with  a  smile,  just  as  I  passed  by  him,  "  that 
she  could  not  and  would  not  live  with  him  because  —  " 

He  continued  to  tell  her  the  rest,  but  I  could  not  make 
out  what  he  was  saying.  After  me,  other  passengers 
passed  in ;  then  the  conductor ;  then  a  porter  ran  in,  and 
there  was  a  dm  for  quite  awhile,  so  that  their  conversa- 
tion could  not  be  heard.  WTien  all  had  quieted  down, 
and  I  again  heard  the  lawj^er's  voice,  the  conversation 
had  evidently  passed  from  the  particular  case  to  generali- 
zations. 

The  lawyer  was  saying  that  the  question  of  divorce  now 
occupied  pubhc  opinion  in  Europe,  and  that  such  cases 
were  becoming  ever  more  frequent  in  our  country.    Upon 


310  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

noticing  that  he  was  the  only  person  whose  voice  was 
heard,  he  interrupted  his  speech,  and  addressed  himself 
to  the  old  man.  "  Such  things  did  not  happen  in  olden 
times,  did  they  ? "  he  said,  with  a  pleasant  smile. 

The  old  man  wanted  to  make  a  reply,  but  just  then 
the  train  started,  and  the  old  man  took  off  his  cap  and 
began  to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  and  to  whisper  a 
prayer.  The  lawyer  turned  his  eyes  away  and  waited 
respectfully.  Having  finished  his  prayer  and  the  three- 
fold sign  of  the  cross,  the  old  man  pulled  his  cap  down  over 
his  head,  adjusted  himself  in  his  seat,  and  began  to  speak : 

"  It  used  to  happen,  sir,  only  not  so  often,"  he  said. 
"  It  could  not  be  different  considering  the  times  we  are 
living  in.     People  are  too  much  educated  nowadays." 

The  train  moved  faster  and  faster,  rumbling  over  the 
rail  ends,  so  that  I  could  not  hear  them  weU.  As  I  was 
interested  in  what  they  were  saying,  I  seated  myself 
nearer  to  them.  My  neighbour,  the  nervous  gentleman 
with  the  sparkling  eyes,  was  apparently  interested  him- 
self :  he  listened  attentively,  without  getting  up. 

"  What  makes  education  bad  ? "  the  lady  said,  with 
a  scarcely  perceptible  smile.  "  Do  you  think  it  is  better 
to  marry  as  of  old,  when  bridegroom  and  bride  did  not 
see  each  other  ? "  she  continued,  replying,  as  is  the  habit 
with  women,  not  to  the  words  of  her  interlocutor,  but  to 
the  words  which  she  supposed  he  would  utter. 

"  They  did  not  know  whether  they  loved  each,  other  or 
could  love  each  other,  and  married  by  chance,  and  then 
suffered  all  their  lives.  In  your  opinion  this  is  better  ?  " 
she  said,  obviously  directing  her  remarks  to  me  and 
to  the  lawyer,  and  least  of  all  to  the  old  man,  with 
whom  she  was  speaking. 

"  People  are  too  much  educated,"  repeated  the  merchant, 
looking  contemptuously  at  the  lady  and  leaving  her  ques- 
tion unanswered. 

"  It  would  be  desirable  to  know  how  you  explain  the 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  311 

connection  between  education  and  marital  incompatibil- 
ity," the  lawyer  said,  with  a  slight  smile. 

The  merchant  wanted  to  say  something,  but  the  lady 
interrupted  him : 

"  No,  that  time  has  passed,"  she  said.  But  the  lawyer 
stopped  her : 

"  Permit  the  gentleman  to  express  his  idea  ! " 

"  Foolishness  comes  from  education,"  the  old  man  said, 
with  determination. 

"  They  join  in  marriage  those  who  do  not  love  each 
other,  and  then  they  wonder  why  it  is  they  do  not  live  in 
peace,"  the  lady  hastened  to  say,  looking  at  the  lawyer 
and  at  me,  and  even  at  the  clerk,  who  had  raised  himself 
in  his  seat  and,  leaning  on  the  hand-rest,  was  listening  to 
the  conversation.  "  Only  animals  may  be  paired  accord- 
ing to  their  master's  will,  but  people  have  their  inclina- 
tions and  attachments,"  said  the  lady,  evidently  wishing 
to  sting  the  merchant. 

"  Madam,  you  say  this  in  vain,"  said  the  old  man, 
"  An  animal  is  a  beast,  but  law  is  given  to  man." 

"  But  how  can  you  want  one  to  hve  with  a  person,  when 
there  is  no  love  between  them  ? "  the  lady  still  hastened 
to  express  her  sentiments,  which,  no  doubt,  seemed  very 
novel  to  her. 

"  In  former  days  this  was  not  considered,"  the  old  man 
said,  in  an  impressive  voice.  "  This  has  only  come  in 
lately.  Let  the  least  thing  happen,  and  the  wife  says : 
'  I  will  leave  you  ! '  Even  peasants  have  taken  to  it. 
'  Here,'  she  says,  '  are  your  shirt  and  trousers,  but  I  will 
go  with  Yanka,  because  his  hair  is  more  curly  than  yours.' 
Go  and  talk  with  them  !  Woman  must,  above  everything 
else,  have  fear." 

The  clerk  glanced  at  the  lawyer,  and  at  the  lady,  and 
at  me,  apparently  holding  back  a  smile,  and  ready  to 
approve  or  ridicule  the  merchant's  speech,  according  to  the 
way  it  was  accepted. 


312  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

'■'  What  fear  ?  "  asked  the  lady. 

"  Namely,  let  her  fear  her  husband !  That's  the  fear 
I  mean ! " 

"  But,  my  friend,  that  time  has  passed,"  the  lady  said, 
almost  with  annoyance. 

"  No,  madam,  that  time  never  can  pass.  Just  as  Eve 
was  created  from  the  rib  of  a  man,  so  she  will  always 
remain,  to  the  end  of  the  world,"  said  the  old  man,  shak- 
ing his  head  so  sternly  and  victoriously  that  the  clerk  at 
once  decided  that  victory  was  on  the  side  of  the  mer- 
chant, and  so  laughed  out  loud. 

"  You  men  judge  like  this,"  said  the  lady,  looking  at 
us,  and  not  giving  in.  "  You  have  taken  liberty  for  your- 
selves, and  you  want  to  keep  woman  in  her  chamber,  but 
you  take  all  kinds  of  liberties  yourselves." 

"  Nobody  gives  them  such  a  permission.  However, 
there  will  be  no  increase  in  the  house  through  a  man, 
whereas  a  woman  is  a  weak  vessel,"  the  merchant  con- 
tinued, in  an  impressive  voice.  The  impressiveness  of 
the  merchant's  intonations  obviously  vanquished  his 
hearers,  and  even  the  lady  felt  herself  crushed,  but  she 
would  not  submit. 

"  Yes.  But  I  think  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
woman  is  a  human  being  and  has  feelings  like  a  man. 
What  is  she  to  do  if  she  does  not  love  her  husband  ? " 

"  If  she  does  not  love  ? "  the  merchant  repeated, 
austerely,  moving  his  brows  and  lips.  "  Never  mind, 
she  will  love  him ! "  This  unexpected  argument  gave 
special  pleasure  to  the  clerk,  and  he  emitted  a  sound  of 
approval. 

"  No,  she  will  not,"  said  the  lady.  "  If  there  is  no 
love,  you  can't  force  her  to  love." 

"  Well,  and  if  the  wife  is  false  to  her  husband,  what 
then  ?  "  said  the  lawyer, 

"  That  is  not  supposed  to  happen,"  said  the  merchant, 
"  and  has  to  be  watched." 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  313 

"  But  if  it  does  happen,  then  what  ?  Such  things  do 
occur." 

"  Maybe  these  things  happen  elsewhere,  only  not  with 
us,"  said  the  old  man. 

Everybody  was  silent.     The  clerk  moved  forward  rest-- 
lessly,  and,  apparently  not  vdshing  to  be  behind  the  others, 
smiled  and  said : 

"  Yes,  there  was  once  a  scandal  with  a  fellow  of  our 
set.  It  is  pretty  hard  to  make  it  out.  His  wife  happened 
to  be  a  loose  woman,  and  off  she  went,  gallivanting.  He 
was  a  sober  kind  of  a  fellov/,  with  great  ability.  At  first 
it  was  with  a  clerk.  Her  husband  tried  to  check  her 
with  kind  treatment,  —  but  she  did  not  stop.  She  did 
all  kinds  of  unseemly  things,  and  began  to  steal  his 
money.  Then  he  beat  her.  Well  ?  She  got  worse  and 
worse.  She  began  intrigues  with  an  infidel  Jew%  excuse 
me  for  mentioning  it.  What  could  he  do  ?  He  gave  her 
up  entirely.  And  so  he  lives  single,  and  she  walks  the 
streets." 

"  Because  he  is  a  fool,"  said  the  old  man.  "  If  he  had 
not  given  her  the  reins  at  first,  but  had  checked  her  in, 
she  would  have  been  all  right.  You  must  not  give  them 
their  liberty  at  first.  Don't  trust  a  horse  in  the  field,  nor 
a  woman  in  the  house  ! " 

Just  then  the  conductor  came  to  ask  for  the  tickets  to 
the  next  station.     The  old  man  gave  up  his. 

"  Yes,  you  must  check  in  the  women  at  the  start,  or 
else  all  is  lost." 

"What  about  the  jollification  married  men  have  at 
the  Kunavin  Fair,  of  which  you  were  telling  awhile  ago  ? " 
I  asked,  having  lOvSt  my  patience. 

"  That  is  a  different  matter,"  said  the  merchant,  and 
buried  himself  in  silence. 

^^^len  the  whistle  blew,  the  merchant  got  up,  got  his 
bag  out  from  under  the  bench,  wrapped  himself  in  his 
coat,  and,  raising  his  cap,  went  out  on  the  brake  platform. 


11. 

No  sooner  had  the  old  man  left  than  there  arose  a 
conversation  in  which  several  persons  took  part. 

"  He  is  a  papa  of  the  old  style,"  said  the  clerk, 

"  A  living  Domostroy  !  "  ^  said  the  lady.  "  What  a  sav- 
age conception  about  woman  and  about  marriage  ! " 

"  Yes,  we  are  very  far  from  the  European  conception 
of  marriage,"  said  the  lawyer. 

"  The  main  tiling  is,  these  people  do  not  understand," 
said  the  lady,  "  that  marriage  without  love  is  not  a  mar- 
riage, that  love  alone  sanctifies  love,  and  that  real  mar- 
riage is  only  such  as  is  sanctified  by  love." 

The  clerk  listened  attentively,  trying  to  memorize  as 
much  as  possible  of  the  clever  remarks,  to  use  them  on 
occasion. 

In  the  middle  of  the  lady's  speech,  there  was  heard 
behind  me  the  sound  of  what  might  have  been  an  inter- 
rupted laugh  or  sob ;  and,  upon  looking  around,  we  saw 
my  neighbour,  the  gray-haired  lonely  gentleman  with  the 
sparkhng  eyes,  who,  unnoticed  by  any  one,  had  come  up 
to  us,  evidently  interested  in  the  conversation.  He  was 
standing,  with  his  hands  on  the  back  of  the  seat,  and 
was  apparently  very  much  agitated :  his  face  was  red 
and  the  muscle  of  his  cheek  was  jerking. 

"  What  kind  of  a  love  is  it  that  sanctifies  marriage  ? " 
he  asked,  hesitatingly. 

Seeing  the  agitated  condition  of  the  que^ioner,  the  lady 
tried  to  answer  him  as  gently  and  clearly  as  possible. 

1 A  sixteenth  century  work  in  which  rules  of  conduct  are  laid 
down. 

314 


THE    KREUTZER   SOXATA  315 

"  True  love  —  If  this  love  exists  between  a  man  and 
a  woman,  then  marriage  is  possible,"  said  the  lady. 

"  Yes.  But  what  do  you  mean  by  true  love  ?  "  said 
the  gentleman  of  the  sparkling  eyes,  with  an  awkward 
smile,  and  with  timidity. 

"  Everybody  knows  what  love  is,"  said  the  lady, 
evidently  wishing  to  break  ofif  her  conversation  with 
him. 

"  But  I  do  not,"  said  the  gentleman.  "  You  must  de- 
fine what  you  understand  —  " 

"What?  It  is  very  simple,"  said  the  lady,  but  she 
stopped  to  think.  "  Love  —  love  is  the  exclusive  prefer- 
ence of  one  person  to  all  others,"  she  said. 

"  Preference  for  how  long  ?  For  a  month,  or  two,  or 
for  half  an  hour  ?  "  muttered  the  gray-haired  gentleman, 
laughing. 

"  Excuse  me,  but  you  are  evidently  not  speaking  of 
the  same  thing." 

"  Yes,  I  am." 

"  The  lady  says,"  interposed  the  lawyer,  pointing  to 
the  lady,  "  that  marriage  must,  in  the  first  place,  spring 
from  attachment,  —  love,  if  you  please,  —  and  only  if  such 
is  on  hand  does  marriage  represent  something  sacred,  so 
to  speak :  then,  that  no  marriage,  without  natural  attach- 
ments —  love,  if  you  wish  —  at  its  base,  carries  any 
moral  obligations  with  it.  Do  I  understand  you  right  ? " 
he  turned  to  the  lady. 

The  lady  with  a  nod  of  her  head  expressed  her  approval 
of  the  exposition  of  her  idea. 

"  Besides  — "  the  lawyer  continued  his  speech,  but 
the  nervous  gentleman,  with  eyes  now  aflame,  not  being 
able  to  repress  himself  any  longer,  did  not  allow  the 
lawyer  to  finish  it,  and  himself  said : 

"  No,  I  have  in  mind  that  which  you  said  about  the 
preference  of  one  to  all  the  rest ;  but  I  ask :  a  preference 
for  how  long  ? " 


316  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

"  For  how  much  time  ?  For  a  long  time,  sometimes  for 
a  whole  life,"  said  the  lady,  shruggiug  her  shoulders. 

"  But  that  happens  only  iu  novels,  and  uever  in  real 
life.  In  real  life  this  preference  of  one  to  others  may  last 
a  few  years,  which  it  rarely  does  ;  more  frequently  for 
months,  or  weeks,  days,  and  even  hours,"  he  said,  being 
apparently  conscious  of  puzzling  all  with  this  opinion  of 
his,  and  satisfied  with  it. 

"  Oh,  how  can  you  say  that  ?  But  no.  No,  excuse 
me,"  all  three  of  us  spoke  at  the  same  time.  Even  the 
clerk  uttered  a  certain  sound  of  disapproval. 

"  Yes,  1  know,"  the  gray-haired  gentleman  tried  to  rise 
above  our  voices,  "  you  are  speaking  of  that  which  you 
assume  as  existing,  whereas  I  speak  of  that  whicli  really 
is.  Every  mau  experiences  that  which  you  call  love  in 
the  presence  of  any  beautiful  woman." 

"  Ah,  what  you  say  is  terrible  !  But  there  certainly  is 
among  people  that  feeling  which  is  called  love,  and  which 
lasts  for  mouths  and  years,  and  even  for  a  lifetime  ? " 

"  No,  there  is  not !  Even  if  we  should  grant  that  a  man 
might  prefer  a  certain  woman  for  all  his  life,  the  woman, 
in  all  probability,  would  prefer  another,  and  thus  it  has 
always  been,  and  always  will  be,"  he  said,  and,  drawing 
out  his  cigai'ette-holder,  he  lighted  a  cigarette. 

"  But  there  might  be  a  mutual  feeling,"  said  the  lawyer. 

"No,  that  cannot  be,"  he  retorted,  "  just  as  it  is  impos- 
sible that  any  two  mark(3d  peas  out  of  a  bag  of  peas 
should  happen  to  lie  together.  Besides,  it  is  not  only  a 
question  of  probability,  but  of  certain  satiety.  To  love 
one  and  the  same  person  all  your  life  amounts  to  saying 
that  one  candle  will  burn  a  lifetime,"  he  said,  taking  a 
long  puff  at  his  cigarette. 

"  You  are  all  speaking  of  carnal  love.  Do  you  not 
admit  love  based  on  oneness  of  ideals,  on  spiritual  affin- 
ity ?"  said  the  lady. 

"  Spiritual  affinity  !     Oneness  of  ideals  ! "  he  repeated, 


THE    KKEUTZEK    SONATA  317 

emitting  his  peculiar  sound.  "  In  that  case  there  is 
no  reason  for  sleeping  together  (pardon  my  coarseness). 
As  it  is,  people  sleep  together  on  account  of  oneness  of 
ideals,"  he  said,  bursting  into  a  nervous  laugh. 

"  But  pardon  me,"  said  the  lawyer, "  facts  contradict  your 
statement.  We  do  see  that  marital  relations  exist,  that  all 
humankind,  or  the  majority  of  it,  live  a  conjugal  hfe,  and 
many  persevere  honestly  in  a  protracted  conjugal  life." 

The  gray-haired  gentleman  laughed  out  once  more. 

"At  first  you  say  that  marriage  is  based  on  love,  and 
when  I  express  a  doubt  in  the  existence  of  a  love  other 
than  the  sensual,  you  prove  to  me  the  existence  of  love 
in  the  fact  that  marriages  exist.  Yes,  but  marriages  are 
mere  deception  in  our  days ! " 

"  You  will  pardon  me,"  said  the  lawyer, "  all  I  said  was 
that  marriages  have  always  existed." 

"  They  have.  But  what  makes  them  exist  ?  They 
have  existed  with  those  people  who  in  marriage  see  some- 
thing mysterious,  —  a  mystery  w"hich  puts  them  under 
obligations  in  the  sight  of  God,  ■ —  there  they  have  existed. 
With  us,  people  marry,  seeing  in  marriage  nothing  but 
cohabitation,  and  from  this  results  either  deception  or 
violence.  If  it  is  a  deception,  it  is  easily  borne.  Hus- 
band and  wife  deceive  others  by  making  them  believe 
that  they  are  monogamous,  whereas  they  are  polygamous 
and  polyandrous.  This  is  bad,  but  it  will  pass  ;  but  when, 
as  so  very  frequently  happens,  husband  and  wife  have 
assumed  the  external  obhgation  to  live  together  all  their 
lives,  and  they  begin  to  hate  each  other  from  the  second 
month  on,  and  wish  to  separate,  and  still  continue  to  live 
together,  then  there  results  that  terrible  hell  which  leads 
people  to  take  to  drink,  to  shoot,  kill,  and  poison  them- 
selves and  each  other."  He  spoke  ever  more  rapidly, 
without  giving  anybody  a  chance  to  interpose  a  word, 
and  getting  more  and  more  excited.  It  was  an  awkward 
situation. 


318  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

"  Yes,  no  doubt  there  are  critical  episodes  in  marital 
life,"  said  the  lawyer,  wishing  to  put  an  end  to  the  inde- 
cently heated  conversation. 

"  I  see  you  have  found  out  who  I  am,"  the  gray-haired 
gentleman  said,  softly,  and  almost  quietly. 

"  No,  I  have  not  the  pleasure." 

"  It  is  not  a  great  pleasure.  I  am  Pozdnyshev,  the 
man  to  whom  that  critical  episode  has  happened,  at  which 
you  have  hinted,  that  episode  which  has  led  to  his  killing 
his  wife,"  he  said,  casting  a  rapid  glance  upon  us. 

Nobody  knew  what  to  say,  and  all  kept  silent. 

"  Well,  it  makes  no  difference,"  he  said,  emitting  his 
strange  sound.  "  However,  excuse  me !  I  will  not 
trouble  you." 

"  Why,  no,  not  at  all,"  said  the  lawyer,  himself  not 
knowing  what  it  was  that  was  "  not  at  all." 

But  Pozdnyshev  paid  no  attention  to  him,  rapidly 
turned  around,  and  went  back  to  his  seat.  The  lawyer 
and  the  lady  whispered  together.  I  sat  by  Pozdnyshev's 
side  and  was  silent,  not  being  able  to  find  anything  to 
talk  about.  It  was  too  dark  to  read,  and  so  I  closed  my 
eyes  and  pretended  that  I  wished  to  fall  asleep.  Thus 
we  rode  in  silence  to  the  next  station. 

At  this  station  the  lawyer  and  the  lady  went  to  another 
car,  having  first  spoken  about  it  to  the  conductor.  The 
clerk  settled  himself  on  the  bench  and  fell  asleep.  Poz- 
dnyshev continued  smoking  all  the  time  and  drank  the 
tea  which  he  had  prepared  for  himself  at  the  previous 
station. 

When  I  opened  my  eyes  and  looked  at  him,  he  suddenly 
turned  to  me  with  determination  and  irritation : 

"  Maybe  it  is  not  agreeable  to  you  to  be  sitting  with 
me,  knowing  who  I  am  ?     In  that  case,  I  will  go  out." 

"  Oh,  not  at  all !  " 

"  Well,  then  won't  you  have  a  glass  ?  It  is  rather 
strong." 


THE   KREUTZER   SONATA  319 

He  poured  out  a  glass  of  tea  for  me. 

"  They  are  talking  and  lying  —  "  he  said. 

"  What  are  you  referring  to  ? "  I  asked. 

"  To  the  same  thing :  to  that  love  of  theirs,  and  to 
what  they  mean  by  it.     Don't  you  want  to  sleep  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all." 

"  Then,  if  you  wish,  I  will  tell  you  how  this  same  love 
had  led  me  to  do  what  I  did." 

"  If  it  will  not  be  painful  to  you." 

"  No,  it  is  painful  for  me  to  keep  quiet.  Drink  the  tea 
—  or  is  it  too  strong  ? "  The  tea  was  really  like  beer,  but 
I  swallowed  a  glass.  Just  then  the  conductor  entered. 
He  silently  followed  him  with  angry  eyes,  and  began 
to  speak  only  after  he  had  left. 


III. 

"  Well,  then  I  will  tell  you  —  But  do  you  really 
want  me  to  ?  " 

I  repeated  that  I  wanted  it  very  much.  He  was  silent 
for  a  moment,  rubbed  his  face  with  his  hands,  and  began : 

"  If  I  am  to  tell  it  to  you,  I  must  begin  from  the 
beginning :  I  must  tell  you  how  I  married  and  why,  and 
the  kind  of  man  I  was  previous  to  my  marriage. 

"  Before  my  marriage  I  lived  like  everybody  else,  that 
is,  in  our  circle.  I  am  a  landed  proprietor  and  a  gradu- 
ate of  the  university,  and  was  a  marshal  of  nobility.  I 
lived  before  my  marriage  like  the  rest,  that  is,  m  de- 
bauchery, and,  like  all  the  people  of  our  circle,  I  was 
convinced  that,  living  in  debauchery,  I  was  living  as 
was  proper.  I  thought  of  myself  that  I  was  a  nice  fellow 
and  entirely  moral.  I  was  not  a  seducer,  had  no  unnat- 
ural tastes,  did  not  make  it  the  chief  purpose  of  my 
life,  as  many  of  my  contemporaries  are  doing,  and  aban- 
doned myself  to  debauchery  in  a  moderate  and  decent 
way,  for  health's  sake.  I  avoided  all  such  women  as  by 
bearing  a  child  or  by  attachment  for  me  might  tie  my 
hands.  However,  there  may  have  been  children  and 
attachments,  but  I  acted  as  though  they  did  not  exist. 
And  this  I  not  only  regarded  as  moral,  but  I  even  was 
proud  of  it  —  " 

He  stopped,  emitted  his  strange  sound,  as  he  always 
did  whenever,  apparently,  a  new  thought  struck  him. 

"  Herein  lies  the  main  villainy,"  he  exclaimed.  "  De- 
bauchery is  not  anything  physical,  —  no  physical  excess 
is  debauchery,  —  debauchery,  real  debauchery,  lies  in  free- 

320 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  321 

ing  oneself  from  the  moral  relations  with  a  woman,  with 
whom  one  enters  into  physical  communion.  It  was  this 
liberation  on  which  I  prided  myself.  I  remember  how  I 
was  once  tormented  when  I  was  not  able  to  pay  a  woman 
who,  having  evidently  fallen  in  love  with  me,  had  aban- 
doned herself  to  me,  and  how  my  conscience  was  appeased 
only  when  I  sent  her  the  money,  by  wliich  I  showed  that 
I  morally  did  not  regard  myself  as  in  the  least  under  any 
obligations  to  her.  Don't  shake  your  head  as  though  you 
agreed  with  me,"  he  suddenly  called  out  to  me.  "  I 
know  all  about  that.  All  of  you,  and  you,  too,  if  by 
some  rare  chance  you  are  not  an  exception,  hold  the  same 
views  which  I  once  held.  Well,  never  mind,  pardon  me," 
he  continued,  "  but  the  main  thing  is,  this  is  terrible,  ter- 
rible, terrible ! " 

"  What  is  terrible  ? "  I  asked. 

"  That  abyss  of  delusions  in  which  we  live  as  regards 
women  and  our  relations  with  them.  Yes,  I  cannot  speak 
of  this  calmly,  not  because  this  cjnsodc,  as  he  called  it,  has 
happened  to  me,  but  because,  when  this  episode  happened 
to  me,  my  eyes  were  opened ;  and  I  suddenly  saw  every- 
thing in  an  entirely  different  light,  —  everything  topsy- 
turvy, everything  topsyturvy  ! " 

He  lighted  a  cigarette  and,  leaning  on  his  knees,  began 
to  speak. 

I  could  not  see  his  face  in  the  darkness  of  the  car,  but 
above  the  rumbling  of  the  car  I  heard  his  impressive  and 
pleasant  voice. 


IV. 

"Yes,  only  by  having  gone  through  all  the  torment, 
only  thanks  to  this,  did  I  comprehend  where  the  root  of 
it  all  was,  did  I  comprehend  what  ought  to  be,  and  there- 
fore did  I  see  the  terror  of  all  that  which  is. 

"  So  you  see  how  and  when  all  that  began  which  led 
me  up  to  my  episode.  It  began  when  I  was  not  quite 
sixteen  years  old.  It  happened  when  I  was  still  in  the 
gymnasium,  while  my  elder  brother  was  a  tirst  year  stu- 
dent at  the  university.  I  did  not  yet  know  women,  but, 
like  all  unfortunate  children  of  our  circle,  I  was  no  longer 
an  innocent  boy :  I  had  been  debauched  by  boys  for  two 
years :  already  woman,  not  any  kind  of  a  woman,  but 
woman  as  a  sweet  being,  woman,  every  woman,  the  naked- 
ness of  woman,  had  been  tormenting  me.  My  withdraw- 
ments  were  impure.  I  suffered  as  suffer  ninety-nine 
hundredths  of  our  boys.  I  was  horrified,  I  was  tormented, 
I  prayed,  and  I  fell.  I  was  already  debauched  in  imagi- 
nation and  in  fact,  but  the  last  step  had  not  yet  been 
taken.  I  was  perishing  myself,  but  I  had  not  yet  laid 
hands  on  another  human  being.  But  my  brother's  com- 
rade, a  jolly  student,  a  so-called  good  fellow,  that  is,  the 
worst  kind  of  a  good-for-nothing,  who  had  taught  us  to 
drink  and  play  cards,  persuaded  me  after  a  carousal  to 
drive  to  that  place.  We  went.  My  brother,  too,  was 
innocent  still,  and  he  fell  that  night.  And  I,  a  fifteen- 
year-old  boy,  desecrated  myself  and  was  instrumental  in 
the  desecration  of  a  woman,  without  comprehending  what 
I  was  doing.  I  had  never  heard  from  my  elders  that 
that  which  I  was  doing  was  bad.     And  even  now  they 

322 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  323 

do  not  hear  it.  It  is  true  it  is  mentioned  in  the  com- 
mandments, but  the  commandments  are  needed  only 
to  answer  the  priest  properly  at  the  examination  ;  nor 
are  they  as  necessary,  anywhere  near  as  necessary,  as 
the  commandment  about  the  use  of  ut  in  conditional 
sentences. 

"  Thus,  I  had  never  heard  it  said  by  my  elders,  whose 
opinion  I  valued,  that  this  was  bad.  On  the  contrary,  I 
heard  from  people  whom  I  respected  that  it  was  good. 
I  heard  that  my  struggles  and  my  suffering  would  cease 
after  it ;  I  heard  it  and  I  read  it ;  I  heard  my  elders  say 
that  it  was  good  for  health ;  and  I  heard  my  companions 
say  that  it  was  meritorious  and  dashing.  Thus,  in  general, 
I  could  foresee  nothing  but  good  in  it.  The  danger  of 
disease  ?  Even  that  was  foreseen.  The  paternal  govern- 
ment takes  care  of  that.  It  watches  over  the  regular 
activity  of  the  houses  of  prostitution,  and  makes  de- 
bauchery for  gymnasiasts  safe.  And  the  doctors  watch 
over  it,  for  a  stated  salary.  So  it  ought  to  be.  They 
affirm  that  debauchery  is  good  for  health,  and  they  pro- 
vide a  well-regulated,  accurate  debauchery.  I  know  some 
mothers  who  in  this  sense  watch  over  the  health  of  their 
sons.  And  science  sends  them  into  houses  of  prosti- 
tution." 

"  How  does  science  send  them  there  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Who  are  the  doctors  ?  Priests  of  science.  Who 
debauches  the  youths,  insisting  that  this  is  necessary  for 
their  health  ?     They. 

"  If  one-hundredth  part  of  the  effort  exerted  on  the  cure 
of  syphilis  were  utihzed  on  the  eradication  of  debauchery, 
there  would  long  ago  not  have  been  a  trace  left  of  syph- 
ilis. Instead,  all  effort  is  exerted  not  on  the  eradication 
of  debauchery,  but  on  its  encouragement,  on  securing  the 
safety  of  debauchery.  Well,  that  is  another  matter. 
The  point  is  that  to  me,  as  to  nine-tenths,  if  not  more,  of 
the  men  of  all  conditions  of  life,  even  among  the  peasants, 


324  THE   KREUTZER   SONATA 

there  happened  that  terrible  thing  that  I  fell,  not  because 
I  became  a  prey  to  the  natural  seductions  of  a  certain 
woman's  charms,  —  no,  not  a  woman  had  seduced  me, 
but  I  fell  because  the  people  around  me  saw  in  the  fall 
either  a  most  lawful  function  which  was  very  useful  to 
health,  or  a  most  natural,  and  not  only  pardonable,  but 
even  innocent  pastime  for  a  young  man. 

"  I  did  not  understand  that  there  was  any  fall ;  I  simply 
began  to  abandon  myself  to  those  part  pleasures,  part 
necessities,  which,  so  I  had  been  impressed,  were  peculiar 
to  a  certain  age,  and  I  abandoned  myself  to  this  debauch- 
ery, as  I  had  abandoned  myself  to  drinking  and  smoking. 
And  yet  there  was  something  especial  and  pathetic  in 
this  fall.  I  remember  how  even  then,  before  I  had  left 
the  room,  I  felt  sad,  so  sad  that  I  felt  like  weeping,  — 
weeping  for  the  loss  of  my  innocence,  for  my  past  relation 
to  woman,  now  for  ever  lost.  Yes,  the  simple,  natural 
relation  to  woman  was  now  for  ever  lost.  From  that  time 
there  no  longer  was  nor  could  be  anv  pure  relation  with 
women.     I  became  what  is  called  a  libertine. 

"  To  be  a  Ubertine  is  a  physical  condition,  resembling 
the  condition  of  a  morphine  fiend,  a  drunkard,  a  smoker. 
Just  as  morphine-eaters,  drunkards,  smokers  no  longer 
are  normal  men,  just  so  a  man  who  has  known  several 
women  is  no  longer  a  normal  man,  but  will  for  ever  be 
spoiled,  —  a  hbertine.  Just  as  drunkards  and  morphine- 
eaters  may  at  once  be  recognized  by  their  faces  and  by 
their  manner,  just  so  is  a  libertine.  A  libertine  may 
restrain  himself  and  struggle,  but  the  simple,  pure,  the 
fraternal  relations  with  women  will  never  again  exist  for 
him.  A  libertine  may  at  once  be  told  from  the  way  he 
looks  at  a  young  woman  and  surveys  her.  And  thus 
I  became  a  libertine  and  remained  one,  and  it  was  this 
which  brought  me  to  ruin." 


"  Yes,  that  is  so.  Then  it  went  farther,  and  farther, 
and  there  were  all  kinds  of  deviations.  0  God  !  I  am 
horrified  when  I  think  of  all  my  villainies.  This  is  the 
way  I  think  of  myself,  whom  my  companions  ridiculed 
for  my  so-called  innocence.  But  when  you  hear  of  the 
golden  youths,  of  the  officers,  of  the  Parisians !  And 
all  these  gentlemen,  and  I,  whenever  we,  thirty-year-old 
debauchees,  who  have  upon  our  souls  hundreds  of  the 
most  varied  and  terrible  crimes  in  regard  to  women,  when 
we,  thirty-year-old  debauchees,  cleanly  washed,  shaven, 
perfumed,  in  clean  linen,  in  evening  dress  or  uniform, 
enter  a  drawing-room  or  appear  at  a  ball,  —  we  are  em- 
blems of  purity,  charming ! 

"  Consider  what  it  ought  to  be  and  what  it  is !  It 
ought  to  be  that  if,  in  society,  such  a  gentleman  comes 
up  to  my  sister  or  daughter,  I,  knowing  his  life,  ought  to 
walk  over  to  him,  to  call  liim  aside,  and  quietly  to  say 
to  him  :  '  Dear  sir,  I  know^  the  kind  of  a  hfe  you  lead  and 
vdth  whom  you  pass  your  nights.  This  is  not  the  place 
for  you.  Here  are  pure,  innocent  girls.  Go  away ! ' 
Thus  it  ought  to  be ;  whereas,  in  reahty,  when  such  a 
gentleman  makes  his  appearance  and  dances  with  my 
sister  or  daughter,  and  embraces  her,  we  rejoice,  if 
he  happens  to  be  rich  and  has  influential  connections. 
Maybe  he  will  honour  my  daughter  after  Eigolboge ! 
Even  if  traces  of  the  disease  are  left,  —  that  does  not 
matter  much,  —  nowadays  they  cure  well.  Eeally,  I  know 
several  girls  of  high  life  who  have-  with  delight  been 

225 


326  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

married  off  by  their  parents  to  men  suffering  from  a  well- 
known  disease.  Oh,  oh,  what  abomination  !  The  time 
will  come  when  such  abomination  and  he  shall  be  laid 
bare ! " 

He  several  times  emitted  his  strange  sounds,  and  took 
to  drinking  tea.  The  tea  was  dreadfully  strong,  —  there 
was  no  water  with  which  to  weaken  it.  I  felt  that  the 
two  glasses  which  I  had  drunk  had  made  me  very  nervous. 
The  tea  seemed  to  have  affected  him,  too,  for  he  became 
ever  more  agitated.  His  voice  became  more  and  more 
sonorous  and  expressive.  He  continually  changed  his 
position  ;  he  now  took  off  his  cap,  and  now  put  it  on  again, 
and  his  face  assumed  strange  forms  in  the  semi,darkness 
in  which  we  were  sitting. 

"  Well,  thus  I  lived  to  my  thirtieth  year,  not  giving  up 
for  a  minute  my  intention  of  marrying  and  preparing  for 
a  most  elevated  and  pure  family  life.  For  this  purpose 
I  looked  around  for  a  girl  who  would  best  answer  to  these 
requirements,"  he  continued.  "  I  besmirched  myself  in 
the  mire  of  debauchery,  and,  at  the  same  time,  scrutinized 
girls  to  see  who  from  her  purity  would  be  most  worthy 
of  me. 

"  I  threw  out  many  of  them  simply  because  they  were 
not  sufficiently  pure  for  my  purpose ;  finally  I  found  one 
whom  I  considered  worthy  of  me.  She  was  one  of  two 
daughters  of  a  former  rich  P^nza  landed  proprietor,  who 
had  lost  his  fortune. 

"  One  evening,  after  we  had  had  an  outing  in  a  boat,  and 
in  the  night,  when  we  returned  home  in  the  moonlight, 
and  I  was  sitting  near  her  and  admiring  her  stately  figure, 
which  was  well  set  off  by  a  jersey,  and  her  locks,  I 
suddenly  decided  that  it  was  she.  It  appeared  to  me  on 
that  evening  that  she  understood  everything,  everything 
which  I  felt  and  thought,  and  that  I  felt  and  thought 
nothing  but  the  most  elevated  things,  whereas  in  reality 
it  was  only  that  her  jersey  and  her  locks  were  very 


THE   KREUTZEK   SONATA  327 

becoming  to  her,  and  that  after  a  day  passed  near  her  I 
longed  for  a  greater  approximation  to  her. 

"It  is  wonderful  how  complete  the  illusion  is  that 
beauty  is  identical  with  goodness.  A  beautiful  woman 
says  insipid  things,  but  you  hear  only  cleverness.  She 
speaks  and  does  unseemly  things,  and  you  see  only  charm. 
And  when  she  says  no  insipidities  and  does  nothing  un- 
seemly, you  at  once  come  to  the  conclusion  that  she  is 
wonderfully  clever  and  moral ! 

"  I  returned  home  in  transport  and  decided  that  she 
was  the  acme  of  moral  perfection,  and  that  therefore  she 
was  worthy  of  being  my  wife,  and  so  I  proposed  to  her 
the  very  next  day. 

"  What  a  chaos  that  is  !  Out  of  a  thousand  men  who 
are  marrying,  not  only  in  our  circle,  but,  unfortunately, 
also  among  the  masses,  there  is  hardly  one  who  has  not 
been  married,  like  Don  Juaa,  ten,  or  a  hundred,  or  even  a 
thousand  times  before  his  wedding. 

"  It  is  true,  I  now  hear  of  young  men  —  and  I  have 
observed  it  to  be  so  —  who  feel  and  know  that  it  is  not  a 
joke,  but  a  great  deed. 

"  God  help  them  !  But  in  my  days  there  was  not  one 
such  in  ten  thousand.  All  know  this,  and  yet  they  pre- 
tend not  to  know  it.  In  all  the  novels  we  have  detailed 
descriptions  of  the  heroes,  and  of  ponds  and  bushes,  near 
which  they  walk ;  but,  in  describing  their  great  love  for 
some  maiden,  there  is  nothing  said  about  what  had 
taken  place  before  with  the  interesting  hero,  —  not  a  word 
of  his  frequenting  certain  houses,  of  chambermaids,  cooks, 
and  other  people's  wives.  And  if  there  are  such  indecent 
novels,  they  are  never  put  into  the  hands  of  those  who, 
above  all  others,  ought  to  know  it,  into  girls'  hands. 

"At  first  we  pretend  before  these  girls  that  the  de- 
bauchery which  fills  one-half  of  our  cities,  and  even  of 
the  villages,  does  not  exist  at  all. 

"  Then  we  all  get  so  used  to  this  pretence  that,  like  the 


328  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

English,  we  begin  sincerely  to  believe  that  we  are  all  moral 
peo]>le  and  live  in  a  moral  world.  These  maidens  —  poor 
maidens  —  believe  this  quite  in  earnest.  Even  thus  my 
wife  believed  it.  I  remember  how  once,  while  engaged  to 
her,  I  showed  her  my  diary,  from  which  she  could  tell, 
even  though  only  in  a  shght  degree,  what  my  past  had 
been,  but  more  especially  what  my  last  liaison  had  been. 
This  she  might  have  learned  from  others,  and  I,  for  some 
reason,  felt  the  necessity  of  informing  her  of  it.  I  remem- 
ber her  terror,  despair,  and  confusion,  when  she  learned 
this  and  comprehended  it.  I  saw  that  she  wanted  to  give 
me  up.     Why  did  she  not  ? " 

He  emitted  his  sound,  gulped  down  another  swallow  of 
tea,  and  kept  silent. 


VI. 

"  No,  after  all,  it  is  better  this  way,  it  is  better ! "  he 
exclaimed.  "  It  served  me  right !  But  this  is  another 
matter.  I  wanted  to  say  that  the  only  ones  who  are 
deceived  are  these  unfortunate  maidens. 

"  The  mothers  know  it,  especially  the  mothers  who  have 
been  educated  by  their  husbands  know  it  well.  Pretend- 
ing to  believe  in  the  purity  of  men,  they,  in  fact,  act  quite 
differently.  They  know  with  what  hne  to  catch  men  for 
themselves  and  for  their  daughters. 

"  We  men  do  not  know  it,  and  we  do  not  know  it 
because  we  do  not  want  to  know  it,  but  the  women  know 
very  well  that  the  most  elevated,  the  poetical  love,  as  we 
call  it,  depends  not  on  moral  qualities,  but  on  physical 
nearness,  and  besides  on  the  dressing  of  the  hair,  and  the 
colour  and  cut  of  the  dress.  Ask  an  expert  coquette,  who 
has  undertaken  to  entice  a  certain  man,  what  she  would 
prefer  to  risk :  to  be  accused,  in  presence  of  him  whom 
she  is  endeavouring  to  charm,  of  lying,  cruelty,  and  even 
debauchery,  or  to  appear  before  him  in  a  badly  made  and 
homely  dress,  —  and  you  will  find  that  she  will  always 
prefer  the  first.  She  knows  that  we  men  are  ranting  about 
high  sentiments,  but  that  we  mean  only  her  body,  and 
that  we,  therefore,  will  forgive  her  all  her  nastiness,  but 
that  we  will  not  forgive  an  ugly,  inartistic,  tasteless 
costume. 

"  The  coquette  knows  this  consciously,  and  every  inno- 
cent girl  knows  it  unconsciously,  just  as  animals  know  it. 

"  This  accounts  for  those  nasty  jerseys,  bustles,  these 
bare  shoulders,  arms,  and  almost  breasts.     Women,  espe- 

329 


oo 


30  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

cially  those  who  have  passed  the  male  school,  know  full 
well  that  all  the  talk  about  elevated  subjects  is  only  talk, 
and  that  man  wants  only  the  body  and  all  that  which 
presents  it  in  the  most  deceptive,  but  at  the  same  time 
in  the  most  enticing,  light,  —  and  it  is  this  which  actually 
is  done.  Cast  aside  this  familiarity  with  all  this  un- 
seemliness, which  has  become  our  second  nature,  and 
take  a  look  at  the  life  of  our  higher  classes,  just  as  it  is, 
with  all  its  shamelessness,  and  you  will  find  that  it 
is  through  and  through  nothing  but  a  house  of  prosti- 
tution. You  do  not  agree  with  me  ?  Permit  me  to  prove 
it  to  you,"  he  said,  interrupting  me.  "  You  say  that  the 
women  of  our  society  have  other  interests  than  those  in 
the  houses  of  prostitution,  but  I  say  no,  and  I  will  prove 
it  to  you.  If  people  differ  in  the  aims  of  their  hves,  in 
the  inner  contents  of  their  lives,  this  difference  must  nec- 
essarily be  reflected  in  their  externals,  and  their  exter- 
nals must  be  different.  But  look  at  those  unfortunate 
and  despised  creatures,  and  at  the  ladies  of  higher  society: 
you  will  find  the  same  costumes,  the  same  fashions,  the 
same  perfumes,  the  same  baring  of  arms,  shoulders,  and 
breasts,  and  the  same  accentuation  of  the  prominent 
bustle,  —  the  same  passion  for  stones  and  expensive 
baubles,  the  same  entertainments,  dances,  music,  and 
singing.  As  those  use  all  means  with  which  to  entice 
men,  so  do  these. 


VII. 

"  Well,  it  was  these  jerseys,  and  locks,  and  bustles  that 
caught  me. 

"  It  was  easy  to  catch  me  because  I  had  been  brought 
up  under  those  conditions  which,  as  cucumbers  are  forced 
in  a  hothouse,  force  young  men  to  fall  in  love.  Our 
stimulating,  superabundant  food,  united  with  complete 
physical  inactivity,  is  nothing  but  a  systematic  incite- 
ment to  lust.  You  may  marvel  at  it,  or  not,  but  it  is  a 
fact.  I  myself  did  not  notice  it  until  very  recently.  But 
now  I  know  it.  And  it  is  precisely  this  which  vexes  me  : 
nobody  knows  it,  but  they  all  continue  talking  such  non- 
sense as  that  which  that  lady  has  been  talking. 

"  Yes,  one  spring,  peasants  had  been  working  on  a  rail- 
road embankment  near  my  farm.  The  usual  food  of  a 
peasant  lad  consists  of  bread,  kvas,  and  onions,  and  with 
this  he  is  alive,  happy,  and  healthy ;  he  performs  light 
field  labour.  He  comes  to  work  on  the  railroad,  and  he 
receives  his  food  allotment  of  porridge  and  a  pound 
of  meat,  but  he  works  off  this  meat  on  sixteen  hours  of 
work  back  of  a  wheelbarrow  weighing  more  than  a  thou- 
sand pounds,  —  and  this  agrees  with  him.  But  we  devour 
two  pounds  of  meat,  and  venison,  and  fish,  and  all  kinds 
of  highly  exciting  eatables  and  drinks,  —  where  does  it  all 
go  to  ?  To  create  sensual  excesses.  If  it  goes  that  way, 
and  the  safety-valve  is  open,  all  is  well ;  but  close  up  the 
valve,  as  I  used  to  close  it  temporarily,  and  you  at  once 
get  incitement,  which,  passing  through  the  prism  of  our 
artificial  life,  will  find  its  expression  in  an  infatuation  of 

331 


332  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

the  clearest  water,  sometimes  even  in  platonic  love.    And 
thus  I  fell  in  love,  like  the  rest. 

"  Everything  was  in  evidence :  the  transports,  the  ten- 
der moods,  and  the  poetry.  In  reality  this  love  of  mine 
was  the  result,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  activity  of  her 
njamma  and  of  the  tailors,  and,  on  the  other,  of  a  surplus 
of  food  swallowed  by  me,  combiued  with  an  inactive  life. 
If,  on  the  one  hand,  there  had  been  no  rowing  and  no 
tailors  with  their  finely  made  waists,  etc.,  and  my  wife 
had  worn  an  unsightly  capote  and  remained  at  home,  and 
if  I,  on  the  other,  had  been  under  normal  conditions,  a 
man  devouring  no  more  food  than  was  necessary  to  do 
work,  and  my  safety-valve  had  been  open,  —  for  the  time 
being  it  happened  to  be  closed,  —  I  should  not  have 
fallen  in  love,  and  nothing  would  have  happened. 


VIII. 

"  Well,  everything  seemed  to  be  favourable  :  my  con- 
dition, the  well-made  garment,  and  the  successful  rowing. 
It  had  been  a  failure  some  twenty  times,  but  this  once 
everything  went  well,  as  happens  with  a  trap.  I  am  not 
laughing.  Marriages  are  now  arranged  hke  traps.  Is 
there  anything  natural  about  it  ?  A  girl  is  grown  up,  — 
she  must  be  married.  This  seems  so  simple,  when  the 
girl  is  not  a  monster,  and  there  are  men  who  want  to  get 
married.  Thus  it  was  done  in  ancient  times.  When  the 
girl  became  of  the  proper  age,  her  parents  arranged 
the  match  for  her.  Thus  it  was  done,  and  still  is  done, 
with  the  whole  human  race :  among  the  Chinese,  the 
Hindoos,  the  Mohammedans,  and  among  our  lower 
classes ;  thus  it  is  done  with  the  whole  human  race,  at 
least  with  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  it.  Only  one  hun- 
dredth, and  even  less,  of  us  debauchees  have  discovered  that 
this  is  not  good,  and  something  new  has  been  concocted. 
What  is  this  new  thing  ?  It  is  this :  the  girls  sit,  and 
the  men,  as  at  a  fair,  walk  up  and  down,  and  make  their 
selection.  The  girls  sit  and  think,  not  daring  to  say  it : 
'  Darhng,  take  me  !  —  No,  me  !  —  Xot  her,  but  me  ;  see 
what  shoulders,  etc.,  I  have  ! '  But  we  men  keep  walking 
up  and  down,  scrutinizing,  and  feeling  quite  satisfied.  '  I 
know,  but  I  will  not  be  caught.'  They  walk  about,  and 
scrutinize,  and  are  quite  satisfied,  seeing  that  it  is  all 
fixed  that  way  to  please  them.  If  one  is  not  on  the  look- 
out, —  bang,  and  he  is  caught  ! " 

"  How  would  you  have  it  otherwise  ?  "  I  said.   "  Would 

you  want  a  woman  to  propose  ? " 

333 


334  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

"  I  do  not  know  what  I  want ;  only,  if  there  is  to  be 
equahty,  let  there  be  equahty.  If  it  has  been  discovered 
that  match-making  is  degrading,  this  is  a  thousand  times 
worse.  There  the  rights  and  chances  are  equal,  but  here 
a  woman  is  either  a  slave  in  the  market,  or  a  bait  in  a 
trap.  Just  try  and  tell  a  mother  or  the  girl  herself  the 
truth  that  all  that  she  is  concerned  in  is  to  catch  a 
husband,  my  God,  what  a  storm  you  would  raise  !  But 
this  is  all  they  are  doing,  and  they  have  nothing  else  to 
do.  What  is  terrible  is  to  see  at  times  extremely  young, 
poor,  innocent  girls  busy  themselves  with  it.  Then 
again,  if  it  were  done  openly,  but  no,  deception  is  prac- 
tised. —  '  Ah,  the  origin  of  species,  how  interesting  that 
is !  Ah,  Lili  is  interested  in  painting !  Shall  you  be  at 
the  exposition  ?  How  instructive  !  And  sleigh-riding, 
and  the  theatre,  and  the  symphony  ?  Ah,  how  remarkable  ! 
My  Lili  goes  into  ecstasies  over  music.  Why  do  you 
not  share  her  convictions  ?  And  rowing  ? '  —  But  the 
only  thought  which  occupies  them  is :  '  Take  me,  take 
me,  my  Lili !  No,  me  !  Well,  just  try  ! '  —  Oh,  what  an 
abomination,  what  a  lie  ! "  he  concluded,  and,  finishing 
what  there  was  left  of  the  tea,  he  began  to  clear  away  the 
cups  and  the  dishes. 


IX. 

"  Do  you  know,"  he  began,  putting  the  tea  and  sugar  in 
a  bag,  "it  is  the  domination  of  women  from  which  the 
world  suffers.      All  this  comes  from  it. 

"  How  do  you  mean  the  domination  of  women  ? "  I  said. 
"  The  rights,  the  privileges,  are  on  the  side  of  men." 

"  Precisely,"  he  interrupted  me.  "  It  is  exactly  what 
I  wanted  to  tell  you.  It  explains  that  unusual  phe- 
nomenon that,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  quite  true  that 
woman  has  been  brought  to  the  lowest  degree  of  humilia- 
tion, while,  on  the  other,  she  dominates.  The  women 
dominate  in  the  same  way  that  the  Jews,  with  their  mone- 
tary powder,  pay  us  back  for  their  oppression.  '  Ah,  you 
want  us  to  be  traders  only,  —  very  well,  we  Jews  will 
take  possession  of  you,'  say  the  Jews.  '  Ah,  you  want  us 
to  be  nothing  but  objects  of  sensuality,  —  very  well,  we, 
as  objects  of  sensuality,  will  enslave  you,'  say  the  women. 
Woman  is  deprived  of  rights  not  because  she  cannot  vote 
or  be  a  judge,  —  there  is  no  special  privilege  in  being 
occupied  with  these  affairs,  —  but  because  in  sexual  in- 
tercourse she  is  not  man's  equal,  has  not  the  right  to 
use  a  man  or  abstain  from  him  according  to  her  wish, 
to  select  a  man  according  to  her  wish,  instead  of  being 
selected.  You  say  this  is  abominable,  —  very  well :  then 
let  men  be  deprived  of  the  same  rights.  At  the  present 
time  woman  is  deprived  of  the  right  which  man  enjoys. 
So,  in  order  to  avenge  herself  on  him  for  this  right,  she 
acts  on  man's  sensuality,  through  this  sensuality  subdues 
him  so  that  he  selects  only  formally,  for  in  reahty  it 
is  she  who  makes  the  selection.     Having  once  possessed 

336 


336  THE   KREUTZER    SONATA 

herself  of  this  means,  she  misuses  it,  and  gains  a  terrible 
power  over  men." 

"  Wherein  does  this  special  power  lie  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Where  does  it  lie  ?  Everywhere,  in  everything.  Go 
through  the  shops  in  any  large  city  !  Millions  of  roubles* 
worth  of  goods  are  displayed  here,  —  it  is  hard  to  estimate 
the  labour  expended  on  them,  —  and  see  whether  in  uine- 
tenths  of  these  shops  there  is  anything  for  the  use  of  men. 
The  whole  luxury  of  life  is  demanded  and  supported  by 
women. 

"  Count  all  the  factories.  An  immense  proportion  of 
them  make  useless  adornments,  carriages,  furniture,  bau- 
bles for  women.  Millions  of  people,  whole  generations 
of  slaves,  perish  in  this  forced  labour  of  the  factories, 
merely  to  satisfy  this  craving  of  the  women.  The  women, 
like  queens,  keep  in  bondage  and  at  hard  labour  nine- 
tenths  of  the  human  race.  All  this  comes  from  having 
humiliated  them  and  deprived  them  of  equal  rights  with 
men.  >So  they  avenge  themselves  by  acting  on  our  sen- 
suality, and  by  catching  us  in  their  nets.  Yes,  that  is 
what  it  comes  from. 

"  Women  have  made  of  themselves  such  a  weapon  of 
sensual  incitement  that  a  man  is  not  able  to  treat  a 
woman  calmly.  The  moment  a  man  walks  over  to  a 
woman  he  comes  under  the  influence  of  her  poison,  and 
becomes  intoxicated.  In  former  days  I  never  felt  at 
ease  when  I  saw  a  woman  all  dressed  up  in  her  evening 
attire,  but  now  I  simply  feel  terribly,  I  cannot  help  see- 
ing something  dangerous  for  men  and  illicit,  and  I  feel 
like  calling  a  policeman  and  asking  protection  against  a 
peril,  and  demanding  that  the  dangerous  object  be  taken 
away  and  removed. 

~  "  Yes,  you  laugh ! "  he  cried  to  me,  "  but  it  is  not  at  all 
a  joke.  I  am  sure  that  the  time  will  come,  and  maybe 
very  soon,  when  people  will  understand  it  and  will  won- 
der how  society  could  exist  where,  in  violation  of   the 


THE   KREUTZEK   SONATA  337 

social  peace,  such  deeds  could  be  permitted  as  are  the 
wearing  of  those  bodily  ornaments  which  directly  provoke 
sensuality,  and  which  society  tolerates  in  the  case  of 
women.  Is  not  this  the  same  as  putting  traps  on  all 
walks  and  paths  ?  No,  it  is  worse !  Why  is  gambling 
forbidden,  and  why  are  women  permitted  to  appear  in 
garbs  which  provoke  sensuality  ?  They  are  a  thousand 
times  more  dangerous. 


X. 

"  Well,  I  was  caught  in  this  manner.  I  was  what  we 
call  in  love.  I  not  only  imagined  her  to  be  the  acme 
of  perfection,  but  during  all  the  time  of  my  engagement 
to  her  I  considered  myself  to  be  the  acme  of  perfection. 
There  is  no  rascal  so  great  that,  upon  instituting  a  search, 
he  could  not  find  some  rascals  who  in  some  respects  stand 
lower  than  he  himself,  and  could  not,  therefore,  find  a 
cause  for  being  proud  and  satisfied  with  himself.  Even 
thus  it  was  with  me :  I  did  not  marry  for  money,  —  calcu- 
lation was  absent  in  my  case,  whereas  the  majority  of  my 
acquaintances  married  for  money  or  connections,  —  I  was 
rich,  she  poor.  This  was  one  thing.  The  other  thiug  of 
which  I  was  proud  was  that,  while  others  married  with 
the  intention  of  continuing  to  live  in  the  same  state  of 
polygamy  as  before  their  marriage,  I  had  the  firm  in- 
tention of  remaining  monogamous  after  marriage,  and 
there  was  no  limit  to  my  pride  on  that  score.  Yes,  I  was 
a  terrible  swine,  and  I  imagined  that  I  was  an  angel. 

"  The  time  of  my  engagement  did  not  last  long.  I 
cannot  think  of  this  time  without  shame.  What  an 
abomination  !  Love  is  supposed  to  be  spiritual  and  not 
sensual.  Well,  if  love  is  of  a  spiritual  nature  and  con- 
sists in  spiritual  communion,  then  this  spiritual  commun- 
ion ought  to  find  its  expression  in  words  and  conversation. 
There  was  nothing  of  the  kind.  It  was  ^ery  hard  for  us 
to  spe^k  together  when  we  were  left  alone.  It  was  the 
labour  of  a  Sisyphus.  No  sooner  had  I  thought  of  some- 
thing and  said  it  than  I  had  to  become  silent  and  think 
of  the  next  thing  to  say.     There  was  nothing   to  talk 

338 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  339 

about.  Everything  that  could  be  said  about  the  life 
which  was  in  store  for  us,  about  arrangements  and  plans, 
had  been  said,  —  and  what  next  ?  If  we  had  been  ani- 
mals we  would  have  known  that  there  is  no  need  of  talk- 
ing ;  here,  on  the  contrary,  we  had  to  talk,  but  there  was 
nothing  to  talk  about,  because  we  were  not  interested  in 
that  which  could  be  gleaned  from  our  conversations.  Then 
there  was  that  ugly  habit  of  eating  candy,  that  coarse 
gormandizing  on  sweets,  and  all  those  abominable  prepa- 
rations for  the  wedding :  the  talks  about  the  apartments, 
the  sleeping-room,  the  beds,  the  capotes,  the  morning- 
gowns,  the  linen,  the  toilets  —  You  must  consider  that 
if  people  marry  according  to  the  injunctions  of  the  Domo- 
stroy,  as  the  old  man  remarked,  then  the  feather  beds,  the 
dowry,  the  beds,  —  all  these  are  only  details  correspond- 
ing to  the  mystery.  But  with  us,  where  of  every  ten 
people  thinking  of  matrimony  nine  certainly  do  not  be- 
lieve in  any  mystery,  and  do  not  believe  even  that  that 
which  they  do  puts  them  under  any  obligations,  when 
there  is  hardly  one  out  of  a  hundred  men  who  has  not 
been  married  before,  and  of  fifty  hardly  one  who  does  not 
prepare  himself  in  advance  to  be  false  to  his  wife  on  any 
convenient  occasion,  when  the  majority  look  upon  the 
church  ceremony  as  only  a  special  condition  for  getting 
possession  of  a  certain  woman,  —  think  what  terrible 
meaning  all  these  details  have  under  these  conditions. 
It  turns  out  that  the  whole  question  lies  only  in  this :  it 
turns  out  to  be  a  kind  of  sale.  An  innocent  girl  is  sold 
to  a  libertine,  and  this  sale  is  surrounded  with  certain 
formahties. 


XI. 

"  Thus  all  marry,  and  thus  I  married,  and  the  much- 
praised  honeymoon  began.  What  a  despicable  name  ! " 
he  hissed  in  anger.  "  I  once  took  in  all  kinds  of  shows 
in  Paris,  and,  being  attracted  by  a  sign,  I  went  in  to  see 
a  bearded  woman  and  a  water  dog.  It  turned  out  that  it 
was  nothing  but  a  man  in  a  d^collet^  dress  and  in  female 
attire,  and  the  dog  was  covered  with  a  sealskin  and  swam 
around  in  a  tub  of  water.  There  was  nothing  of  interest 
there ;  but  as  I  went  out  the  showman  politely  saw  me 
out,  and,  turning  to  the  crowd  at  the  door,  he  pointed  to 
me  and  said :  '  You  ask  this  gentleman  whether  it  is 
worth  seeing.  Come  in,  come  in,  one  franc  a  per- 
son ! '  I  felt  ashamed  to  say  that  I  had  been  taken 
in,  and  the  showman  evidently  counted  on  that.  Thus, 
no  doubt,  it  is  with  those  who  have  experienced  all  the 
abomination  of  the  honeymoon  and  do  not  wish  to  dis- 
enchant others.  Neither  did  I  disenchant  any  one,  but 
now  I  see  no  reason  for  concealing  the  truth.  I  even 
regard  it  as  my  duty  to  tell  the  truth  about  it.  It  is 
awkward,  shameful,  abominable,  wretched,  and,  above 
everything  else,  dull,  inexpressibly  dull !  It  was  some- 
thing like  when  I  first  learned  to  smoke,  when  I  felt  like 
vomiting  and  the  spittle  was  abundant,  and  I  swallowed 
it,  and  pretended  to  be  happy.  The  enjoyment  from 
smoking,  even  as  from  this,  if  it  is  to  be  at  all,  will  be 
later :  it  is  necessary  for  the  husband  to  cultivate  this 
vice  in  his  wife,  in  order  to  derive  pleasure  from  it." 

"  You  call  it  a  vice  ? "  I  said.  "  You  are  speaking  of 
the  most  natural  human  quality." 

340 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  341 

"  Natural  ? "  he  said.  "  Natural  ?  No,  I  will  tell  you, 
on  the  contrary,  that  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  not  natural.  Yes,  entirely  unnatural.  Ask  a  child, 
ask  an  uncorrupted  girl ! 

"  You  say  natural ! 

"  It  is  natural  to  eat.  It  is  a  pleasure  and  a  joy  to  eat, 
and  comes  easy  and  causes  no  shame  from  the  very  start ; 
but  in  this  case  it  is  abominable,  shameful,  and  painful. 
No,  it  is  unnatural !  And  I  have  convinced  myself  that 
uncorrupted  girls  always  hate  it." 

"  But  how,"  said  I,  "  how  would  the  human  race  be 
continued  ? " 

"  Yes,  what  is  to  be  done  in  order  that  the  human  race 
may  not  perish  ! "  he  said,  with  malicious  irony,  as  though 
expecting  this  familiar  and  unscrupulous  retort.  "  Preach 
continence  from  childbirth  in  order  that  Enghsh  lords 
may  always  be  able  to  gormandize,  that  is  all  right. 
Preach  continence  from  childbirth  in  order  to  derive  as 
much  pleasure  as  possible,  that  is  all  right.  But  only 
mention  continence  from  childbirth  in  the  name  of  moral- 
ity, —  Lord,  what  a  cry  is  raised  !  The  human  race  might 
come  to  an  end  because  they  want  to  stop  being  swine ! 
However,  excuse  me,  this  light  annoys  me,  —  may  I  shade 
it  ? "  he  said,  pointing  to  the  lamp.  I  told  him  that  it 
made  no  difference  to  me,  and  then  he  rose  in  his  seat 
hurriedly,  just  as  he  did  everything,  and  drew  the  cloth 
shade  over  the  lamp. 

"  Still,"  I  said,  "  if  you  considered  this  to  be  a  law,  the 
human  race  would  soon  stop." 

He  did  not  answer  at  once. 

"  You  ask  me  how  the  human  race  will  be  continued  ?" 
he  said,  again  taking  a  place  opposite  me,  spreading  his 
legs  wide,  and  resting  his  elbows  low  upon  them.  "  Why 
should  it  be  continued  ? "  he  said. 

"  Vfhy  ?     Else  we  should  not  be  here." 

"  Why  should  we  ? 


342  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

"  Why  ?     In  order  to  live." 

"  Why  should  we  live  ?  If  there  is  no  aim,  if  life  is 
given  us  for  life's  sake,  there  is  no  reason  for  hving. 
And  if  it  is  so,  then  Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann,  and  all 
the  Buddhists  are  quite  right.  Well,  if  there  is  an  aim 
in  Hfe,  it  is  evident  that  life  must  cease  when  that  aim  is 
reached.  That  is  what  it  comes  to,"  he  said,  with  agita- 
tion, apparently  very  proud  of  his  idea.  "  That  is  what 
it  comes  to.  You  must  notice  that  if  the  aim  of  humanity 
is  goodness,  —  love,  if  you  wish,  —  if  the  aim  of  human- 
ity is  that  which  is  mentioned  in  the  prophecies,  when  all 
people  will  unite  together  in  love,  and  the  spears  will  be 
forged  into  sickles,  and  so  forth,  then  what  is  in  the  way 
of  the  accomphshment  of  this  aim  ?  —  The  passions.  Of 
aU  the  passions,  the  sexual,  carnal  love  is  the  strongest, 
the  most  evil  and  stubborn  ;  therefore,  if  all  the  passions 
are  to  be  destroyed,  this  latter,  the  strongest  of  them  all, 
carnal  love,  will  also  be  destroyed,  and  the  prophecy  wiU 
be  fulfilled,  people  will  be  united,  the  aim  of  humanity 
will  be  reached,  and  there  will  be  no  reason  for  it  to 
exist.  As  long  as  the  human  race  exists,  the  ideal  is 
before  it,  and,  of  course,  not  the  ideal  of  rabbits  and 
swine,  which  is  to  breed  as  fast  as  possible,  and  not  of 
monkeys  and  Parisians,  to  use  in  the  most  refined  manner 
the  enjoyments  of  sexual  passion,  but  the  ideal  of  good- 
ness, which  is  reached  through  continence  and  purity. 
People  have  always  striven  for  this.  And  see  what  comes 
of  it! 

"It  turns  out  that  carnal  love  is  a  safety-valve.  If 
the  present,  living  generation  of  the  human  race  has  not 
reached  its  aim,  it  has  not  reached  it  because  it  has  pas- 
sions, and  the  strongest  of  them  is  the  sexual  passion. 
As  long  as  there  is  sexual  passion  there  is  a  new  gen- 
eration, consequently  there  is  a  possibility  for  the  next 
generation  to  reach  the  aim.  If  this  one  does  not  reach 
it,  the  next  may,  and  so  it  goes  on  until  it  will  be  at- 


THE   KREUTZER   SONATA  343 

tained,  aud  the  prophecy  will  be  fulfilled,  and  people  will 
be  united. 

"  See  what  would  have  happened  otherwise !  If  we 
are  to  admit  that  God  has  created  men  in  order  to  attain 
a  certain  aim,  he  would  have  made  them  mortal,  but 
without  sexual  passion,  or  immortal.  If  they  were  mortal 
but  without  sexual  passion,  what  would  happen  ?  They 
would  hve  and  die  without  reaching  that  aim,  and  so 
God  would  have  to  create  new  men.  But  if  they  were 
immortal,  then  let  us  suppose  (although  it  would  be 
harder  for  them  than  for  new  generations  to  correct  mis- 
takes and  approach  perfection),  —  then  let  us  suppose 
that  they  would  reach  their  aim  after  many  thousand 
years.  What  would  they  then  be  for  ?  A\Tiere  are  they 
to  be  put  then  ?  And  so  it  is  better  as  it  is.  But  it  may 
be  that  this  form  of  expression  does  not  please  you,  and 
you  are  an  evolutionist.  Even  then  it  will  come  to  the 
same.  The  highest  race  of  animals,  the  human,  to  be 
able  to  maintain  itself  in  its  struggle  with  other  animals, 
must  unite  compactly,  like  a  swarm  of  bees,  and  not 
breed  endlessly ;  it  must,  Kke  the  bees,  bring  up  sex- 
less individuals,  that  is,  it  again  must  strive  for  conti- 
nence, and  not  for  the  incitement  of  lust,  tow^ard  which 
our  whole  structure  of  hfe  is  directed."  He  grew  silent. 
"  The  human  race  will  cease  ?  But  is  there  any  one  who 
will  doubt  this,  whatever  his  way  of  looking  upon  the 
world  may  be  ?  This  is  as  certain  as  death.  According 
to  all  the  teachings  of  the  church  there  will  come  an 
end  of  the  world,  and  the  same  is  inevitable  by  all  the 
teachings  of  science. 


XII. 

"  In  our  world  the  very  opposite  takes  place :  if  a 
man  thought  of  continence  while  unmarried,  he  considers 
such  continence  unnecessary  the  moment  he  has  married. 
These  solitary  journeys  after  the  wedding,  which  the 
young  people  take  with  their  parents'  consent,  what  are 
they  but  a  license  to  commit  debauchery  ?  But  a  moral 
law,  being  violated,  demands  its  own  punishment, 

"  No  matter  how  much  I  tried  to  arrange  the  honey- 
moon for  myself,  nothing  came  of  it.  All  the  time  I  only 
felt  an  abomination,  shame,  and  duhiess.  Very  soon 
a  painful  and  oppressive  feehng  was  added  to  this.  It 
began  very  soon.  1  beheve  on  the  third  or  fourth  day 
I  found  my  wife  in  a  dull  mood ;  I  began  to  ask  her  what 
the  matter  was,  and  embraced  her,  which,  in  my  opinion, 
was  all  she  could  wish,  but  she  pushed  my  arm  aside  and 
burst  out  weeping.  What  about  ?  She  could  not  say. 
She  simply  felt  sad  and  oppressed.  In  all  probability  her 
tired  nerves  told  her  the  truth  of  the  abomination  of  our 
relations,  but  she  could  not  say  so.  I  began  to  inquire : 
she  said  something  about  being  lonely  without  her  mother. 
It  appeared  to  me  that  this  was  not  true.  I  began  to 
speak  persuasively  to  her,  without  mentioning  her  mother. 
I  did  not  understand  that  she  simply  was  oppressed  and 
that  her  mother  was  only  an  excuse.  But  she  soon  felt 
offended  because  I  did  not  mention  her  mother,  as  though 
i  did  not  believe  her.  She  told  me  that  she  was  sure  I 
did  not  love  her.  I  accused  her  of  caprice,  and  suddenly 
her  face  was  completely  changed  :  instead  of  sadness  there 
was  now  an  expression  of  irritation,  and  with  the  most 

844 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  345 

venomous  words  she  began  to  upbraid  me  for  my  egotism 
and  cruelty. 

"  I  looked  at  her.  Her  countenance  expressed  complete 
coldness  and  hostility,  almost  hatred  of  me.  I  remember 
how  frightened  I  was  when  I  saw  this.  '  What  is  this  ? ' 
I  thought.  '  Love  is  the  union  of  souls,  and  this  has 
come  in  place  of  it !  This  cannot  be,  that  is  not  she ! ' 
I  tried  to  appease  her,  but  I  ran  up  against  such  an 
insuperable  wall  of  coldness  and  venomous  hostility  that 
before  I  had  time  to  look  around,  the  irritation  took  posses- 
sion of  me,  too,  and  we  told  each  other  a  mass  of  unpleas- 
ant things.  The  impression  of  this  first  quarrel  was 
terrible.  I  called  it  a  quarrel,  but  it  was  not  a  quarrel ; 
it  was  a  manifestation  of  the  abyss  which  was  in  reahty 
between  us.  The  infatuation  was  exhausted  by  the  grati- 
fication of  sensuality,  and  we  were  left  in  our  real  rela- 
tions to  each  other,  that  is,  two  mutually  strange  egotists, 
who  wished  to  derive  as  much  pleasure  from  each  other 
as  was  possible.  I  called  that  a  quarrel  which  had  taken 
place  between  us ;  it  was  not  a  quarrel,  —  it  was  only  the 
result  of  an  interrupted  sensuality  which  laid  bare  our 
real  relations  to  each  other.  I  did  not  understand  that 
this  cold  and  hostile  attitude  was  our  normal  relation ;  I 
did  not  understand  it  because  the  hostile  relation  was 
in  the  beginning  soon  veiled  from  us  by  a  new  access  of 
fleeting  sensuality,  that  is,  by  infatuation. 

"  I  thought  that  we  had  quarreled  and  made  up,  and  that 
it  would  never  happen  again.  But  even  during  this  same 
honeymoon  there  again  was  reached  a  period  of  satiety, 
again  we  ceased  to  be  useful  to  each  other,  and  another 
quarrel  took  place.  The  second  quarrel  impressed  me 
even  more  than  the  first.  '  It  appears  that  the  first 
quarrel  was  not  an  accident,  but  that  it  must  be  so  and 
always  will  be  so,'  I  thought. 

"  The  second  quarrel  struck  me  the  more  forcibly  be- 
cause it  had  its  rise  in  an  absolutely  impossible  cause, 


346  THE   KREUTZER   SONATA 

something  about  money,  which  I  never  grudged,  and  cer- 
tainly not  to  my  wife.  All  I  remember  is  that  she  gave 
such  a  twist  to  a  remark  of  mine  that  it  turned  out  to  be 
an  expression  of  my  desire  to  rule  over  her  by  means 
of  money,  to  which,  according  to  her  words,  I  had  affirmed 
my  own  exclusive  right,  —  at  all  events,  it  was  something 
impossible,  stupid,  mean,  and  unnatural,  of  no  consequence 
either  to  her  or  to  me.  I  grew  irritated,  began  to  upbraid 
her  for  her  want  of  dehcacy,  she  did  the  same,  and  off  it 
started  again.  In  her  words,  in  the  expression  of  her 
countenance  and  her  eyes,  I  saw  the  same  cruel,  cold 
animosity,  which  had  struck  me  so  before.  I  remember 
I  had  quarreled  with  my  brother,  my  friend,  my  father, 
but  there  had  never  been  between  us  that  venom9us 
mahce  which  arose  in  this  case. 

"  Some  time  passed,  and  this  mutual  hatred  was  again 
veiled  under  the  infatuation,  that  is,  under  sensuality,  and 
I  consoled  myself  with  the  thought  that  these  two  quarrels 
were  mistakes  that  could  be  mended.  But  soon  there 
came  a  third  and  a  fourth  quarrel,  and  I  understood  that 
it  was  not  an  accident,  but  that  it  must  be  so,  that  it 
would  be  so,  and  I  was  horrified  at  that  which  awaited 
me.  I  was,  besides,  tormented  by  the  terrible  thought 
that  it  was  I  alone  who  was  living  with  my  wife  so 
badly  and  contrary  to  all  expectation,  whereas  this  does 
not  happen  in  other  cases  of  matrimony.  I  did  not  know 
then  that  it  was  a  common  fate,  and  that  every  one 
thought,  like  myself,  that  it  was  his  exclusive  misfortune, 
that  he  concealed  this  exclusive  and  disgraceful  misfor- 
tune, not  only  from  everybody  else  but  even  from  him- 
self, without  acknowledging  it  to  himself. 

"  It  had  begun  in  the  very  first  days  and  it  continued 
all  the  time,  and  it  grew  ever  stronger  and  more  pwnted. 
In  the  depth  of  my  heart  I  felt  from  the  start  that  I  was 
lost,  that  there  had  happened  that  which  I  had  not  ex- 
pected, that  marriage  was  not  only  no  happiness,  but  even 


THE  kheutzer  sonata  347 

something  very  oppressive  ;  however,  like  all  the  rest,  I 
did  uot  wish  to  acknowledge  the  fact  to  myself  (I  would 
not  have  acknowledged  it  even  now  were  it  not  for  the 
end),  and  I  concealed  it  not  only  from  others,  but  even 
from  myself.  Now  I  wonder  how  it  was  that  I  did  not 
see  my  real  situation.  It  might  have  been  seen  from  the 
very  fact  that  the  quarrels  began  from  such  causes  that 
later,  when  they  were  over,  it  was  difficult  to  recall  what 
had  caused  them.  Reason  had  no  time  to  simulate  suffi- 
cient causes  for  the  constant  animosity  which  subsisted 
between  us.  Still  more  striking  was  the  insufficiency  of 
excuses  for  making  up  again.  At  times  there  were  words, 
explanations,  even  tears,  but  often —  Oh,  it  is  horrible 
to  think  of  it  —  after  the  bitterest  words  uttered  toward 
each  other,  suddenly  there  were  silent  glances,  smiles, 
kisses,  embraces  —  Fie,  what  abomination  !  How  could 
I  have  missed  seeing  then  all  the  vileness  of  it  ? " 


XIII. 

Two  passengers  entered  and  seated  themselves  on  a 
distant  bench.  He  kept  silent  while  they  were  seating 
themselves,  but  as  soon  as  they  quieted  down  he  pro- 
ceeded, apparently  not  losing  the  thread  of  his  thoughts 
for  a  minute  even. 

"  The  vilest  thing  about  it  is,"  he  began,  "  that  in 
theory  love  is  something  ideal,  elevated,  whereas  in  prac- 
tice it  is  abominable,  swinish,  a  thing  of  which  it  is 
abominable  and  a  shame  to  think  and  speak.  Nature  has 
purposely  made  it  abominable  and  shameful.  And  if  it 
is  an  abomination  and  a  shame,  it  ought  to  be  under- 
stood as  such,  whereas  people,  on  the  contrary,  pretend 
that  this  abomination  and  shame  is  beautiful  and  ele- 
vated. What  were  the  first  signs  of  my  love  ?  They 
were  these :  I  abandoned  myself  to  animal  excesses,  not 
only  feeling  no  shame,  but  somehow  priding  myself  on 
the  possibility  of  these  physical  excesses,  paying  not  the 
least  attention  to  her  spiritual,  nay,  not  even  to  her  phys- 
ical, life.  I  was  bewildered  to  discover  whence  our 
animosity  to  each  other  came,  but  it  was  quite  simple : 
this  animosity  was  nothing  but  a  protest  of  human  nature 
against  the  animal  which  oppressed  it. 

"  I  marvelled  at  our  mutual  enmity.  How  could  it 
have  been  otherwise  ?  This  hatred  was  nothing  but  the 
hatred  which  is  common  to  participators  in  a  crime,  both 
for  the  incitement  to  the  crime,  and  for  the  part  taken  in 
it.  What  else  was  it  but  a  crime,  when  she,  poor  woman, 
became  pregnant  in  the  first  month,  and  our  swinish 
union  still  continued?     You  think  that  I  am  deviating 

848 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  349 

from  my  story  ?  Not  in  the  least !  I  am  telling  you 
how  I  killed  my  wife.  In  the  court  they  asked  me  how 
and  with  what  I  killed  my  wife.  The  fools  thought 
that  I  killed  her  with  a  knife  on  the  5th  of  October.  I 
did  not  kill  her  then,  but  much  earher.  Just  as  they 
now  continue  to  kill  them,  all  of  them,  all  —  " 

"  With  what  ? " 

"  This  is  the  remarkable  thing :  nobody  wants  to  know 
that  which  is  so  clear  and  evident ;  that  which  doctors 
ought  to  know  and  preach,  but  about  which  they  keep 
silent.  The  thing  is  dreadfully  simple.  Men  and  women 
are  created  like  animals,  and  after  sexual  love  begins 
pregnancy,  then  lactation,  —  that  is,  conditions  under 
which  carnal  love  is  injurious  both  to  the  woman  and  to 
her  child.  There  are  an  equal  number  of  men  and 
women.  What  follows  from  this  ?  It  seems  to  be  clear, 
and  it  does  not  take  much  wisdom  to  draw  from  it  the 
same  conclusion  that  animals  draw,  namely,  continence. 
But  no.  Science  has  gone  so  far  as  to  discover  certain 
leucocytes  that  race  about  in  the  blood,  and  all  kinds  of 
useless  foolishness,  but  it  has  not  been  able  to  grasp  this 
matter.  At  least,  one  does  not  hear  science  speaking 
of  it. 

"  Thus  there  are  but  two  ways  out  for  woman  :  one  is 
to  make  a  monster  of  herself  and  destroy  once  and  for  all, 
or  every  time  when  the  necessity  arises,  the  possibility  of 
being  a  woman,  that  is,  a  mother,  in  order  that  man  may 
quietly  and  constantly  enjoy  himself ;  the  other  way  out, 
—  it  is  not  even  a  way  out,  but  merely  a  simple,  coarse, 
direct  violation  of  the  laws  of  Nature,  which  is  committed 
in  all  so-called  decent  families,  and  which  is,  that  woman, 
in  opposition  to  her  nature,  must  at  the  same  time  be 
pregnant,  and  nurse  a  child,  and  be  a  mistress, : —  that  is, 
that  she  must  be  that  to  which  not  one  animal  would 
descend.  Strength  does  not  hold  out.  Therefore,  we 
have  hysterics  and  nerves,  and,  among  the  lower  masseSj 


350  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

epilepsy.  You  will  notice  that  pure  girls  have  no  epi- 
lepsy, but  only  women,  that  is,  women  living  with  their 
husbands.  Thus  it  is  in  our  country.  The  same  is  true 
of  Europe  in  general.  All  the  hospitals  of  hystericals 
are  full  of  women  who  violate  the  laws  of  Nature.  The 
epileptics  and  Charcot's  patients  are  the  complete  wrecks, 
whereas  the  world  is  full  of  half-maimed  women.  Just 
think  what  a  great  work  is  going  on  in  woman  when  she 
has  conceived  or  when  she  nurses  the  newly-born  child ! 
There  is  growing  up  that  which  continues  us  and  takes 
our  place  !  And  this  sacred  work  is  violated,  —  by  what  ? 
—  it  is  terrible  to  think  of  it !  And  they  prate  about  the 
liberty  and  the  rights  of  woman.  It  is  as  though  canni- 
bals were  fattening  captives  for  their  feast,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  assuring  us  that  they  are  considerate  about 
their  rights  and  their  freedom." 

All  this  was  entirely  new  to  me  and  startled  me. 

"  Well,  if  it  is  so,"  I  said,  "  it  turns  out  that  one  may 
love  his  wife  about  twice  in  a  year,  and  a  man  —  " 

"  A  man  must !  "  he  interrupted  me.  "  Again  the  dear 
priests  of  science  have  so  assured  us.  Impress  a  man 
with  the  idea  that  he  needs  wliiskey,  tobacco,  opium, 
and  all  this  becomes  necessary  to  him.  It  appears  that 
God  did  not  comprehend  what  was  necessary,  and  since 
He  did  not  consult  with  the  wizards,  He  made  blunders. 
You  will  see  that  this  is  not  reasonable.  They  have 
decided  that  man  must  of  necessity  gi'atify  his  lust,  but 
childbirth  and  lactation,  which  interfere  with  the  gratifi- 
cation of  this  necessity,  are  in  the  way.  What  is  to  be 
done  ?  Turn  to  the  wizards,  and  they  will  fix  it  up.  And 
they  have  done  so !  Oh,  when  will  these  wizards  with 
their  deceptions  be  dethroned  ?  It  is  high  time !  What 
have  we  come  to  ?  People  lose  their  minds  and  commit 
suicide,  —  all  from  this  cause.  How  could  it  be  other- 
wise ?  Animals  seem  to  understand  that  their  progeny 
continues  their  race,  and  thev  adhere  to  certain  laws  in 


THE   KREUTZER   SONATA  351 

this  respect.  Only  man  does  not  know  it,  nor  wants  to 
know  it.  He  is  concerned  only  about  getting  the  greatest 
possible  enjoyment.  And  who  is  doing  that  ?  The  king 
of  Nature,  —  man  !  You  will  notice  that  animals  come 
together  only  when  they  can  ensure  a  progeny,  whereas 
the  accursed  king  of  Nature  is  always  at  it,  provided 
he  can  derive  pleasure  from  it.  More  than  that:  he 
extols  this  simian  occupation  into  a  pearl  of  creation,  into 
love.  And  in  the  name  of  this  love,  —  that  is,  of  abom- 
ination, he  destroys  —  what  ?  —  one-half  of  the  human 
race.  Of  all  the  women,  who  ought  to  be  the  helpmates 
in  humanity's  progress  toward  truth  and  goodness,  he,  in 
the  name  of  his  pleasure,  makes  not  helpmates,  but 
enemies.  See,  who  is  it  that  everyw^here  impedes  the 
onward  march  of  humanity  ?  Women.  Why  are  they 
such  ?  For  the  reason  which  I  have  mentioned.  Yes, 
sir,  yes,  sir,"  he  repeated  several  times  and  began  to 
move  about,  to  take  out  his  cigarettes,  and  to  smoke, 
apparently  wishing  to  calm  himself. 


XIV. 

"  I  LIVED  like  just  such  a  swine,"  he  contiaued,  in  his 
former  tone  of  voice.  "  The  worst  of  it  was  that,  hvinsr 
this  bad  hfe,  I  imagined  that,  because  I  was  not  attracted 
to  other  women,  because  I  was  hving  an  honest  domestic 
life,  I  was  a  moral  man,  and  that  I  was  not  guilty  of 
anything,  but  that  our  quarrels  were  due  to  her,  her 
character. 

"  Of  course,  it  was  not  she  alone  who  was  at  fault. 
She  was  such  as  all,  or  as  the  majority  are.  She  had 
been  educated  as  the  position  of  woman  in  our  society 
demands,  and  as  are  brought  up  all  the  women,  without 
exception,  of  our  privileged  classes,  and  as  they  of  neces- 
sity must  be  brought  up.  They  are  prating  of  a  new 
education  for  women.  Empty  words :  the  education  of 
woman  is  just  what  it  ought  to  be  considering  the  existing 
unfeigned,  true,  general  view  held  in  regard  to  woman. 

"  The  education  of  woman  will  always  correspond  to 
man's  view  of  her.  We  all  know  what  men  think  of 
them :  '  Wein,  Weih,  und  Gesangl  and  poets  say  so  in 
verse.  Take  all  poetry,  all  painting  and  sculpture,  begin- 
ning with  amatory  poems  and  naked  Venuses  and  Phry- 
nes,  and  you  will  see  that  woman  is  an  instrument  of 
enjoyment ;  so  she  is  on  the  Truba  and  on  the  Grach^vka,i 
and  at  the  most  refined  ball.  Take  note  of  the  devil's 
cunning :  all  right,  let  it  be  enjoyment  and  pleasure,  let 
it,  then,  be  known  that  it  is  enjoyment,  and  that  woman 
is  a  dainty  morsel.  No,  at  first  the  knights  assure  us 
that  they  will  worship  woman  (that  they  will,  but  they 

^  Streets  iu  Moscow.    ' 
352 


THE   KREUTZEK   SONATA  353 

will  not  cease  looking  upon  her  as  an  instrument  of  enjoy- 
ment). Now  they  assure  us  that  they  respect  woman. 
Some  give  their  seats  to  them,  and  pick  up  their  hand- 
kerchiefs ;  others  acknowledge  their  right  to  occupy  cer- 
tain positions,  to  take  part  in  the  government,  and  so 
on.  This  they  do,  but  the  view  remains  the  same :  she 
is  an  instrument  of  enjoyment ;  her  body  is  a  means  for 
enjoyment.  And  she  knows  it.  It  is  just  the  same  as 
with  slavery. 

"Slavery  is  nothing  but  the  enjoyment  of  the  forced 
labour  of  others.  Consequently,  in  order  that  there 
should  be  no  slavery,  it  would  be  necessary  for  men  not 
to  wish  to  make  use  of  the  forced  labour  of  others,  that 
they  should  regard  this  as  sinful  and  disgTaceful,  whereas, 
in  reality,  they  change  the  external  form  of  slavery  and 
imagine  and  assure  themselves  that  there  is  no  longer  any 
slavery,  aud  they  do  not  see  and  do  not  wish  to  see  that 
slavery  still  exists,  because  people  still  continue  to  love 
and  consider  good  and  just  the  enjoyment  of  the  labours 
of  others.  As  long  as  they  regard  this  as  good,  there 
will  always  be  found  men  who  are  stronger  and  more 
cunning  than  the  rest  and  who  will  be  able  to  accom- 
plish it. 

"  Precisely  the  same  is  the  case  with  the  emancipation 
of  woman.  The  enslavement  of  woman  consists  in  men's 
desire  to  make  use  of  her  as  an  instrument  of  enjoyment, 
and  in  their  considering  this  to  be  right.  So  they  go  and 
free  woman,  and  give  her  all  kinds  of  equal  rights  with 
man,  but  continue  to  look  upon  her  as  an  instrument  of 
enjoyment,  aud  to  educate  her  accordingly,  in  childhood, 
and  in  public  opinion.  And  she  remains  the  same  humil- 
iated and  debauched  slave,  and  man  is  the  same  debauched 
slave-owner. 

"  They  free  woman  in  tlie  colleges  and  in  courts,  but 
still  look  upon  her  as  an  instrument  of  enjoyment.  Teach 
her,  as  she  is  taught  with  us,  to  look   upon  herself  in 


354  THE    KREUTZEK   SONATA 

this  manner,  and  she  will  always  remain  a  lower  being. 
Either,  with  the  aid  of  scoundrel  doctors,  she  will  prevent 
conception,  that  is,  she  will  be  a  complete  prostitute, 
who  has  descended,  not  to  the  lowest  animal,  but  to  the 
level  of  a  thing,  or  she  will  be  what  she  is  in  the  major- 
ity of  cases,  diseased  in  mind,  hysterical,  unhappy,  with- 
out any  possibility  for  spiritual  growth. 

"  The  gymnasia  and  the  colleges  cannot  change  this. 
This  can  be  changed  only  by  a  changed  view  held  by  men 
in  regard  to  women,  and  by  women  in  regard  to  them- 
selves. This  will  come  about  only  when  women  will 
regard  as  their  highest  state  the  condition  of  virginity, 
and  not,  as  now,  look  upon  this  highest  condition  of  man 
as  a  shame  and  disgrace.  As  long  as  this  does  not  exist, 
the  ideal  of  .every  girl,  whatever  her  education  may  be, 
will  be  to  attract  to  herself  as  many  men,  as  many  males 
as  possible,  in  order  to  have  a  chance  to  select. 

"  But  the  fact  that  one  knows  a  lot  of  mathematics  and 
that  another  can  play  on  the  harp,  will  not  change  it.  A 
woman  is  happy  and  obtains  everything  she  may  wish 
for,  if  she  fascinates  a  man.  And  thus  a  woman's  chief 
problem  becomes  the  ability  to  fascinate.  Thus  it  has 
been,  and  thus  it  will  be.  Thus  it  is  in  the  hfe  of  a  girl 
of  our  society,  and  thus  it  remains  after  marriage.  In 
the  maiden  state  she  needs  it  for  selection,  in  her  matri- 
monial state  —  in  order  to  rule  over  her  husband. 

"  There  is  but  one  thing  which  cuts  it  short,  or  at  least 
for  a  time  suppresses  it,  and  that  is  cliildren,  provided  the 
woman  is  not  a  monster  and  herself  nurses  them.  But 
here  the  doctors  come  in. 

"  My  wife,  who  wanted  herself  to  suckle  and  did  suckle 
the  last  four  children,  was  not  in  good  health  when  the 
first  baby  was  born.  These  doctors,  who  cynically  un- 
dressed and  felt  her  all  over,  for  which  I  had  to  thank 
them  and  pay  them  money,  —  these  charming  doctors 
found  that  she  must  not  herself  nurse,  and  she  was,  dur- 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  355 

ing  this  first  time,  deprived  of  the  only  means  which 
would  have  saved  her  from  coquetry.  The  baby  was 
brought  up  by  a  wet-nurse,  that  is,  we  made  use  of  the 
poverty,  want,  and  ignorance  of  a  woman,  enticed  her 
away  from  her  own  child  to  ours,  and  for  this  put  on 
her  a  nurse's  headgear  with  galloons.  But  this  is  another 
matter.  The  trouble  was  that  during  her  period  of  freedom 
from  pregnancy  and  lactation  her  former  dormant  femi- 
nine coquetry  returned  to  her.  And  in  me  there  appeared 
with  unusual  force  the  corresponding  torment  of  jealousy, 
which  never  ceased  torturiiw  me  during  the  whole  time 
of  my  married  life,  just  as  all  husbands  are  tortured  who 
live  with  their  wives  as  I  did,  that  is  immorally. 


XV. 

"  During  all  the  time  of  my  married  life  I  never  stopped 
experiencing  pangs  of  jealousy.  But  there  were  certain 
periods  when  I  suffered  more  than  usual  from  it.  One 
such  period  was  when,  after  the  first  babe,  the  doctors 
forbade  her  to  nurse  it.  I  was  especially  jealous  during 
that  time,  in  the  first  place,  because  my  wife  was  expe- 
riencing that  unrest,  peculiar  to  mothers,  which  produces 
a  causeless  violation  of  the  regular  order  of  life ;  and,  in 
the  second,  because,  seeing  how  easily  she  rejected  the 
moral  obligation  of  mothers,  I  justly,  though  uncon- 
sciously, concluded  that  it  would  be  just  as  easy  for  her 
to  violate  her  marital  life,  the  more  so  since  she  was  quite 
well  and,  in  spite  of  the  prohibition  of  the  charming 
doctors,  later  nursed  her  own  children,  and  brought  up 
healthy  children." 

"  I  see  you  do  not  Hke  doctors,"  I  said,  noticing  an 
especially  malignant  expression  of  his  voice  every  time 
he  mentioned  them. 

"  It  is  not  a  question  of  likes  and  dislikes.  They  have 
ruined  my  life,  as  they  have  ruined  the  hves  of  thousands, 
of  hundreds  of  thousands,  without  my  being  able  to  con- 
nect the  consequences  with  the  cause.  I  understand  that 
they  want  to  make  money,  just  like  the  lawyers  and 
others,  and  I  should  gladly  have  given  up  to  them  half 
of  my  income,  and  everybody  else,  understanding  what 
they  are  doing,  would  gladly  give  up  to  them  half  of  their 
possessions,  if  they  only  would  not  interfere  with  your 
domestic  life,  and  never  came  up  close  to  you.  I  have 
not  been  collecting  information,  but  I  know  dozens  of 

356 


THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA  357 

cases  —  there  are  plenty  of  them  —  where  they  have 
killed  either  the  child  in  the  mother's  womb,  averrintr 
that  the  mother  could  not  bring  forth  the  child,  although 
later  the  mother  has  borne  children  without  difficulty,  or 
have  killed  the  mothers,  under  the  pretext  of  some  opera- 
tion. Nobody  counts  these  murders,  just  as  they  did  not 
count  the  murders  of  the  Inquisition,  because  they  were 
supposed  to  be  for  the  good  of  humanity.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  count  all  the  crimes  which  are  committed  by 
them.  But  all  these  crimes  are  nothing  in  comparison 
with  that  moral  materialistic  decadence  which  they  in- 
troduce into  the  world,  especially  through  the  women. 

'•'  I  shall  leave  out  of  account  the  fact  that,  if  one  were 
to  follow  their  instructions,  people  would  have  to  tend, 
on  account  of  ever  present  infections  in  everything  and 
everywhere,  not  to  union  but  to  disunion ;  according  to 
their  injunctions,  people  ought  to  sit  in  solitude,  without 
letting  an  atomizer  with  carbolic  acid  out  of  their  mouths 
(however,  they  have  discovered  that  even  this  is  of  no 
avail).  But  this  is  nothing.  The  chief  poison  lies  in  the 
corruption  of  men,  especially  of  women. 

"  Nowadays  one  must  not  say :  '  You  are  not  living 
well,  you  must  live  better.'  One  can't  say  that  to  himself, 
nor  to  any  one  else.  And  if  you  are  living  badly,  the 
cause  of  it  is  the  abnormality  of  the  nerve  functions,  or 
something  of  the  kind.  And  you  have  to  go  to  them, 
and  they  will  prescribe  thirty-five  kopeks'  worth  of 
medicine  from  the  apothecary's,  and  you  have  to  take 
it! 

"  You  will  grow  worse,  then  take  more  medicine,  and 
go  again  to  the  doctor.     It  is  very  clever  ! 

"  But  that  is  another  matter.  I  only  wish  to  say  that 
she  had  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in  nursing  her  chil- 
dren, and  that  this  nregnancv  and  nursing  alone  saved  me 
from  the  torments  of  jealousy.  If  it  had  not  been  for 
this,  it  would  all  have  happened  before.     The  children 


358  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

saved  me  and  her.     In  eight  years  she  bore  five  children, 
and  she  nursed  them  all  but  the  first  herself." 

"  Where  are  your  children  now  ? "  I  asked. 

"  The  children  ?  "  he  repeated  the  question,  with  an  ex- 
pression of  terror. 

"  Excuse  me,  maybe  this  is  too  painful  for  you  ? " 

"  jSTo,  not  at  all.  My  wife's  sister  and  her  brother  have 
taken  them.  They  did  not  give  them  to  me.  I  have  given 
them  my  estate,  but  they  did  not  give  them  up  to  me.  I 
am  something  like  a  lunatic  according  to  them.  I  am 
now  leaving  them.  I  saw  them,  but  they  will  not  let  me 
have  them,  because  I  should  educate  them  to  be  different 
from  their  parents,  whereas  it  is  necessary  for  them  to  be 
hke  them.  Well,  what  is  to  be  done  ?  Of  course  they 
will  not  let  me  have  them,  and  they  will  not  trust  me. 
Besides,  I  do  not  know  whether  I  should  have  strength 
enough  to  brinsj  them  up.  I  think  not.  I  am  a  ruin,  a 
cripple.  There  is  just  one  thing  in  me  —  I  know.  Yes, 
this  much  is  certain :  I  know  that  which  others  will  not 
know  so  soon. 

"  Yes,  the  children  are  alive  and  growing  up  to  be  just 
such  savages  as  all  around  them  are.  I  have  seen  them, 
I  have  seen  them  three  times.  I  can  do  nothing  for 
them,  nothing.  I  am  now  travelling  south,  to  my  home : 
I  have  a  cottage  and  garden  there. 

"  Yes,  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  people  will  find  out 
that  which  I  know.  It  is  easy  enough  to  find  out  how 
much  iron  and  what  metals  there  are  in  the  sun  and 
stars ;  but  it  is  hard,  dreadfully  hard,  to  comprehend  that 
which  casts  any  aspersions  on  our  swinishness  ! 

"  I  am  thankful  to  you  for  being  wilhng  to  listen  to 
me. 


XVI. 

"You  mentioned  my  children.  What  a  lot  of  lying 
they  do  about  children  !  Children  are  God's  blessing, 
children  are  a  joy.  This  is  nothing  but  a  lie.  That  used 
to  be  so,  but  now  there  is  no  semblance  of  it.  Children 
are  a  bother,  and  nothing  else.  The  majority  of  mothers 
feel  it  outright,  and  incidentally  allow  themselves  to  say 
so.  Ask  the  majority  of  mothers  of  our  circle,  well-to-do 
people,  and  they  will  tell  you  that  out  of  fear  that  their 
children  might  get  ill  and  die,  they  do  not  wish  to  have 
any  children,  and  do  not  wish  to  nurse  them  after  they 
are  born,  in  order  not  to  become  attached  to  them  and  not 
to  suffer.  The  pleasure  which  the  child  affords  them  by 
its  charm,  —  by  those  little  hands  and  feet,  and  by  the 
whole  body,  —  the  pleasure  afforded  by  the  child  is  less 
than  the  suffering  which  they  experience,  —  let  alone  from 
disease  or  loss  of  the  child,  —  from  the  mere  fear  of 
possible  sickness  or  death.  Weighing  both  the  advantages 
and  disadvantages,  it  appears  that  it  is  disadvantageous 
and,  consequently,  undesirable  to  have  children.  They 
say  this  frankly  and  boldly,  imagining  that  these  senti- 
ments arise  from  their  love  for  children,  a  good  and 
praiseworthy  feeling,  of  which  they  are  proud.  They  do 
not  notice  that  by  this  reflection  they  directly  refute  love, 
and  only  confirm  their  egotism.  They  derive  less  pleasure 
from  the  charm  of  a  child  than  suffering  caused  by  anxiety, 
and  so  that  child,  which  they  might  love,  is  not  wanted. 
They  do  not  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  beloved  creature, 
but  for  their  own  sakes  they  sacrifice  the  creature  who 
might  be  loved. 

359 


360  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

"  It  is  evident  that  this  is  not  love,  but  egotism.  But 
not  a  hand  is  raised  to  condemn  them,  the  mothers  of 
well-to-do  families,  for  this  egotism,  when  you  consider 
what  it  is  they  suffer  for  the  sake  of  their  children's 
health,  thanks  again  to  the  role  these  doctors  play  in  our 
upper  classes.  It  makes  me  shudder  even  now  when  I 
recall  the  life  and  the  condition  of  my  wife  during  those 
jBrst  years,  when  there  were  three  or  four  children,  and  she 
was  all  absorbed  in  them.  We  led  no  hfe  at  all.  It  was 
an  eternal  danger,  an  escaping  from  it,  a  new  impending 
danger,  new  desperate  efforts,  and  a  new  salvation, — 
eternally  the  same  condition  as  on  a  sinking  ship.  At 
times  I  thought  that  it  was  done  on  purpose,  that  she 
only  pretended  to  be  so  anxious  about  the  children,  in 
order  to  vanquish  me.  It  solved  so  enticingly  and  simply 
all  the  questions  in  her  favour.  It  seemed  to  me  at  times 
that  everything  she  said  and  did  in  such  cases  was  done 
on  purpose.  But  no,  she  really  was  all  the  time  in  terri- 
ble agony  and  pain  about  the  children,  their  health  and 
sicknesses.  It  was  a  trial  for  her  and  for  me,  too.  Nor 
could  she  help  suffering.  Her  attachment  for  her  chil- 
dren, the  animal  necessity  of  feeding,  fostering,  defending 
them,  was  such  as  it  is  in  the  majority  of  women,  but 
there  was  not  that  which  animals  have,  —  an  absence 
of  imagination  and  reason. 

"  A  hen  is  not  afraid  of  what  might  happen  with  her 
chick,  does  not  know  all  the  diseases  which  might  befall 
it,  does  not  know  all  the  means  with  which  people  imag- 
ine they  can  save  from  disease  and  death.  The  young 
ones  are  no  torment  for  the  hen.  She  does  for  her  chicks 
what  is  natural  and  pleasurable  for  her  to  do,  —  her  young 
ones  are  a  joy  to  her.  When  a  chick  becomes  ill,  her  cares 
are  quite  definite :  she  warms  and  feeds  it.  Doing  this, 
she  knows  that  she  is  doing  all  that  is  necessary.  If  the 
chick  dies,  she  does  not  ask  herself  why  it  has  died, 
whither  it  has  gone ;  she  cackles  for  awhile,  then  stops 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  361 

and  continues  to  live  as  of  old.  But  for  our  unfortunate 
women  this  is  not  the  case,  and  it  was  not  for  my  wife. 
Let  alone  the  diseases,  how  to  cure  them,  she  heard  on 
all  sides  and  read  endlessly  varied  and  eternally  changed 
rules  about  how  to  rear  and  educate  the  children :  to  feed 
them  with  this  and  that,  and  in  such  a  way,  —  no,  not 
with  this  and  that,  and  in  such  a  way,  but  like  this ;  to 
dress,  give  them  drink,  bathe,  put  them  to  bed,  give  them 
outings,  air,  —  in  regard  to  all  these  things  we,  but  more 
especially  she,  learned  new  rules  every  week.  It  looked 
as  though  it  was  but  yesterday  that  women  had  begun  to 
bear  children.  And  if  a  child  was  not  fed  so  or  so,  not 
properly  bathed  and  not  in  time,  and  it  gi-ew  ill,  —  then 
the  conclusion  was  that  we  were  at  fault,  that  we  had  not 
done  right  by  it. 

"  There  was  enough  trouble  as  long  as  they  kept  well ; 
but  let  them  get  ill,  and  then,  of  course,  it  was  a  real 
hell.  It  is  supposed  that  a  disease  can  be  cured  and  that 
there  is  a  science  about  it,  and  people,  the  doctors,  who 
know  how  to  cure.  Not  all,  but  the  very  best  know  how. 
So  the  child  is  ill,  and  you  must  strike  him,  that  best 
doctor,  who  can  save,  and  the  child  will  be  saved ;  or  if 
you  do  not  get  him,  or  you  do  not  live  in  the  place  where 
that  doctor  lives,  the  child  will  perish.  This  is  not 
her  exclusive  belief,  but  the  belief  of  all  the  women  of  her 
circle,  and  she  hears  it  on  all  sides  :  Ekaterina  Sem^novna 
has  lost  two,  because  she  did  not  call  Ivan  Zakharych  in 
time.  Ivan  Zakharych  has  saved  Marya  Ivanovua's  elder 
daughter ;  at  the  Petrovs',  they,  by  the  doctor's  advice, 
scattered  to  various  hotels,  and  they  survived  ;  —  they  did 
not  scatter,  and  the  children  died ;  such  and  such  a  one 
had  a  weak  child,  and  they  went  to  the  south,  by  the 
doctor's  advice,  and  saved  the  child.  How  can  she  help 
worrying  and  suffering  all  her  life  when  the  lives  of  her 
children,  to  whom  she  is  animally  attached,  depend  upon 
her  finding  out  in  time  what  Ivan  Zakharych  may  say 


362  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

about  it  ?  But  what  Ivan  Zakharych  will  say,  nobody 
knows,  least  of  all  be  himself,  because  he  knows  hill  well 
that  he  knows  nothing  and  is  unable  to  be  of  any  use, 
and  continues  making  haphazard  guesses,  in  order  that 
people  should  not  lose  faith  in  his  knowledge.  If  she 
were  all  animal,  she  would  not  worry  so  much  ;  if  she  were 
all  man,  she  would  have  faith  in  God,  and  she  would  say 
and  think  as  believers  say :  '  God  hath  given,  God  hath 
taken,  you  cannot  go  away  from  God.' 

"The  whole  life  with  the  children  had  been  for  my 
wife,  consequently  also  for  me,  not  a  pleasure,  but  a  tor- 
ment. How  could  this  have  been  avoided  ?  She  was  in 
eternal  worry.  We  would  calm  down  from  some  scene  of 
jealousy  or  simply  from  a  quarrel,  and  we  would  try  to  live 
in  peace,  to  read  and  think,  or  we  would  take  up  some 
work,  when  the  sudden  news  would  be  brought  to  us  that 
Vasya  was  vomiting,  or  Masha  was  having  a  bleeding 
spell,  or  Andryusha  had  an  eruption,  —  well,  there  was 
an  end  to  peace.  Now  the  question  was :  '  Where  must 
one  gallop  ?  for  what  doctors  ?  how  shall  the  children  be 
isolated  ? '  And  there  would  begin  clysters,  temperatures, 
mixtures,  and  doctors.  No  sooner  would  one  thing  be 
finished,  than  another  began.  There  was  no  regular, 
settled  domestic  life.  There  was  only,  as  I  have  told 
you,  an  eternal  anxiety  on  account  of  imaginary  or  real 
dangers.  It  is  so  now  in  the  majority  of  families.  In  my 
family  this  was  very  pronounced.  My  wife  was  fond  of 
her  children  and  credulous. 

"  Thus  the  presence  of  children  did  not  improve  our 
life;  it  only  poisoned  it.  Besides,  the  children  were  a 
new  cause  for  dissensions.  The  children  themselves  were 
the  means  and  objects  of  dissensions  from  the  moment  they 
existed,  and  the  older  they  grew,  the  more  frequently 
was  this  so.  The  children  were  not  only  the  objects  of 
our  dissensions,  but  also  the  weapons  of  our  battles,  —  we 
used  our  children,  as  it  were,  to  fight  each  other  with. 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  363 

Each  of  us  had  a  favourite  child,  the  weapon  of  the  fight. 
I  fought  mainly  by  means  of  Vasya,  the  elder,  and  she  by 
means  of  Liza.  Besides,  when  the  children  grew  up  and 
their  characters  defined  themselves,  we  attracted  them  to 
our  sides.  The  poor  things  suffered  dreadfully  from  it, 
but  we,  in  our  constant  state  of  war,  had  no  time  to  con- 
sider them.  A  little  girl  was  my  partisan,  whereas  the 
elder  boy,  who  resembled  her,  her  favourite,  was  frequently 
the  object  of  my  hatred- 


XVII. 

"  "Well,  this  is  the  way  we  lived.  Our  relations  grew 
ever  more  liostile.  Finally  we  reached  such  a  stage  that 
it  was  not  the  dissensions  that  caused  the  hostility,  but 
the  hostility  which  provoked  the  dissensions.  No  matter 
what  she  said,  I  disagreed  with  her  from  the  start,  and 
the  same  was  the  case  with  her. 

"  In  the  fourth  year  both  sides  came  to  the  natural 
conclusion  that  we  could  not  understand  each  other  or 
agree.  We  did  not  even  try  to  hear  each  other's  opinions. 
In  regard  to  the  simplest  things,  especially  in  regard  to 
the  children,  we  invariably  stuck  to  our  ideas.  As  I  think 
of  them  now,  the  opinions  which  I  defended  were  not  of 
such  prime  importance  to  me  as  not  to  admit  of  devia- 
tions ;  but  she  held  the  contrary  view,  and  yielding  would 
have  meant  yielding  to  her.  That  I  could  not  do.  Neither 
could  she.  She,  no  doubt,  considered  herself  absolutely 
right  in  regard  to  me,  while  I  was,  to  my  thinking,  a  saint 
in  her  presence.  When  we  were  left  alone,  we  were 
doomed  to  silence  or  to  kinds  of  conversation  which,  I  am 
sure,  animals  even  could  carry  on  :  '  What  time  is  it  ?  It 
is  time  to  go  to  bed.  What  shall  we  have  for  dinner  ? 
Where  shall  I  go  ?  What  do  the  papers  say  ?  Send  for 
the  doctor.  Masha  has  a  sore  throat.'  It  was  enough 
for  us  to  deviate  a  hair's  breadth  from  this  circle  of  con- 
versations, which  was  contracted  to  impossible  limits,  in 
order  to  give  irritation  a  chance  to  flame  up. 

"  There  were  conflicts  and  expressions  of  hatred  for  the 
coffee,  the  table-cloth,  the  vehicle,  the  progress  of  the  game 
of  cards,  —  for  things  that  could  be  of  no  importance  to 

364 


THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA  365 

either  of  us.  In  aie,  at  least,  a  terrible  hatred  for  her 
was  frequently  fermenting.  I  frequently  looked  at  her, 
while  she  poured  out  the  tea,  swung  her  foot,  or  carried 
the  spoon  to  her  mouth  and  noisily  sipped  a  liquid, 
and  I  haied  her  for  it  as  for  the  meanest  act.  I  did 
not  notice  then  that  the  periods  of  irritation  arose  quite 
regularly  and  evenly  in  me,  corresponding  to  the  periods 
of  what  we  called  love.  A  period  of  love,  then  a  period  of 
irritation ;  an  energetic  period  of  love,  a  long  period 
of  irritation ;  a  more  feeble  manifestation  of  love,  a 
short  period  of  irritation.  We  did  not  understand  then 
that  love  and  anger  were  the  same  animal  sensations,  only 
from  opposite  euds. 

"  It  would  have  been  terrible  to  live  thus  if  we  had 
understood  our  situation  ;  but  we  did  not  understand,  nor 
see  it.  A  man's  salvation,  and  punishment  at  the  same 
time,  when  he  hves  irregularly,  lies  in  the  fact  that  he 
can  befog  himself,  in  order  not  to  see  the  wretchedness 
of  his  situation.  This  we  did.  She  tried  to  forget  herself 
in  tense,  always  hurried  occupations  with  household 
affairs,  with  her  own  and  her  children's  toilets,  and  with 
her  children's  studies  and  health.  I  had  my  own  affairs : 
drinking,  service,  the  chase,  cards.  We  were  both  all  the 
time  occupied.  Both  of  us  felt  that  the  more  we  were 
occupied,  the  more  infuriated  we  could  be  at  each  other. 
'  It  is  easy  enough  for  you  to  make  grimaces,'  thought  I, 
'  but  you  have  worn  me  out  with  your  all-night  scenes, 
and  here  I  have  to  attend  a  meeting.'  '  You  are  all  right,' 
she  not  only  thought,  but  even  said,  '  but  I  have  sat 
up  all  night  with  the  baby.'  All  these  new  theories  of 
hypnotism,  mental  diseases,  and  hysterics,  —  all  that  is 
not  a  simple,  but  a  dangerous  and  abominable  insipidity. 
Charcot  would,  no  doubt,  have  said  about  my  wife  that 
she  w^as  hysterical,  and  of  me  he  w^ould  have  said  that 
I  was  abnormal,  and  would  have,  no  doubt,  begun  to  cure 
me.     But  there  was  nothing  there  to  cure. 


366  THE    KKEUTZEK   SONATA 

"  Thus  we  lived  in  an  eternal  fog,  without  seeing  the 
situation  we  were  in.  If  that  which  had  happened  had 
not  taken  place  and  if  I  had  hved  in  the  same  manner 
until  old  age,  I  should,  at  my  death,  have  thought  that 
I  had  lived  a  good  life,  —  not  an  especially  good,  but  not 
necessarily  a  bad,  life,  —  such  as  all  live;  1  should  not 
have  come  to  comprehend  that  abyss  of  wretchedness  and 
that  contemptible  lie  in  which  I  wallowed. 

«  We  should  have  been  two  mutually  hating  prisoners, 
fettered  with  one  chain,  poisoning  each  other's  life,  and 
endeavouring  not  to  see  this.  I  did  not  know  then  that 
ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  married  couples  live  in  the 
same  hell,  and  that  it  cannot  be  otherwise.  At  that  time 
I  knew  neither  of  others,  nor  of  myself. 

"  It  is  remarkable  what  coincidences  there  are  in  well- 
regulated  and  even  in  badly  regulated  lives !  Just  when 
the  life  of  the  parents  becomes  unbearable  to  both  of 
them,  it  becomes  necessary  to  subject  the  children  to  the 
conditions  of  the  city  for  the  sake  of  their  education. 
And  thus  rises  the  necessity  of  settling  in  the  city. " 

He  grew  silent  and  once  or  twice  uttered  his  strange 
sounds,  which  now  perfectly  resembled  repressed  sobs. 
We  were  getting  near  to  a  station. 

"  What  time  is  it  ? "  he  asked. 

I  looked  at  my  watch :  it  was  two  o'clock. 

"  Are  you  not  tired  ? "  he  asked. 

"  No.     But  you  are  !  " 

"  I  have  a  choking  feeling.  Excuse  me,  I  will  walk  a 
little  and  take  a  drink  of  water." 

He  went,  staggering,  through  the  car.  I  remained  sitting 
alone,  running  through  everything  he  had  told  me,  and  I 
was  so  lost  in  thought  that  I  did  not  notice  how  he  had 
come  in  by  the  other  door. 


XVIII. 

"  Yes,  I  digress  all  the  time,"  he  began.  "  Much  have 
I  thought  over.  At  many  things  I  now  look  differently, 
and  1  feel  like  telhng  about  this.  Well,  we  began  to  live 
in  the  city.  A  man  may  live  a  hundred  years  in  the  city 
without  perceiving  that  he  has  long  been  dead  and  decayed. 
There  is  no  time  to  balance  one's  own  accounts,  —  one  is 
too  busy  :  with  affairs,  society  obligations,  health,  art,  the 
children's  health,  their  education.  Now  you  must  receive 
this  and  that  person,  now  you  must  visit  this  and  that 
one ;  and  now  again  you  must  look  at  such  and  such  a 
one,  or  listen  to  what  they  have  to  say.  In  the  city  there 
are,  at  any  given  moment,  one,  two,  or  three  celebrities 
whom  you  cannot  afford  to  miss.  Now  you  have  to  cure 
yourself,  or  this  or  that  child ;  and  now  you  have  to  look 
for  teachers,  tutors,  governesses,  but  in  reality  it  is  dread- 
fully empty.  Well,  thus  we  hved  and  felt  less  the  pain 
of  our  companionship.  Besides,  at  first  we  had  admirable 
occupations :  getting  fixed  in  the  new  city  and  in  our 
new  apartments,  and  our  ruigra^tions  from  the  city  to  the 
country,  and  from  the  country  back  again  to  the  city. 

"We  passed  one  winter  in  this  way,  but  thef  next 
winter  there  happened  the  following  apparently  insignifi- 
cant incident,  which  was  not  taken  notice  of  by  any  one, 
but  which  produced  that  wdiich  later  took  place. 

"  She  was  not  in  good  health,  and  the  doctors  told  her 
that  she  must  have  no  children,  and  taught  her  how  to 
keep  from  having  them.  This  disgusted  me.  I  fought 
against  it,  but  she  insisted  upon  it  with  frivolous  stubborn- 
ness, and  I  had   to  submit ;  the   last   justification   of  a 


368  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

swinish  life,  the  children,  was  taken  away,  and  life  became 
more  abominable  still. 

"  A  peasant,  a  labourer,  needs  children.  It  is  hard  for 
him  to  bring  them  up,  but  he  needs  them,  and  therefore 
his  conjugal  relations  are  justitied.  But  we  people  who 
have  children,  need  no  more  children :  they  are  an  addi- 
tional care,  an  expense,  co-heirs,  they  are  a  burden.  And 
thus  there  is  no  justification  whatsoever  fox  our  swinish 
life.  Either  we  artiticially  get  rid  of  children  or  we  look 
upon  them  as  a  misfortune,  as  the  result  of  an  accident, 
and  this  is  still  more  abominable. 

"  There  are  no  justiticatious.  But  we  have  fallen 
morally  so  deep  that  we  do  not  even  see  the  need  of  any 
justitication. 

"  The  majority  of  the  contemporary  educated  world 
abandon  themselves  to  this  debauchery  without  the  least 
compunction. 

"  There  is  no  reason  for  feeling  any  compunction, 
because  in  our  existence  there  is  no  other  conscience  than, 
if  one  may  call  it  so,  the  conscience  of  public  opinion  and 
criminal  law.  In  this  case  neither  the  one  nor  the  other 
are  violated :  there  is  no  cause  to  be  conscience-stricken 
before  society,  because  they  all  do  it :  Marya  Pavlovna, 
and  Ivan  Zakharych.  And  what  sense  would  there  be 
in  breeding  paupers  and  depriving  yourself  of  the  possi- 
bility of  leading  a  social  life  ?  Nor  is  there  any  cause 
for  being  conscience-stricken  before  the  criminal  law,  or  to 
be  afraid  of  it.  Those  monstrous  girls  and  soldiers'  wives 
throw  their  children  into  ponds  and  wells,  —  they,  of 
course,  must  be  put  in  jail,  —  but  we  do  it  all  at  the 
proper  time  and  in  a  decent  manner. 

"  Thus  we  lived  two  more  years.  The  measures  of  the 
scoundrel  doctors  apparently  began  to  bear  fruit :  she 
became  physically  stronger  and  handsomer,  like  the  last 
beauty  of  summer.  She  felt  it  and  paid  attention  to  it. 
There  developed  in  her  a  certain  provoking  beauty  which 


THE    KKEUTZEK    SONATA  369 

made  people  feel  uneasy.  She  was  in  all  the  strength 
of  a  thirty-year-old,  non-bearing,  well-fed,  and  irritated 
woman.  A  glance  at  her  caused  uneasiness.  When  she 
passed  by  men,  she  attracted  their  glances  to  her.  She 
was  like  a  long-rested,  well-fed  harnessed  horse  when  its 
bridle  is  taken  off.  There  was  no  bridle,  just  as  is  the 
case  with  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  our  women.  I  was 
conscious  of  it,  and  I  felt  terribly." 


XIX. 

He  suddenly  got  up  and  sat  down  near  the  window. 

"  Pardon  me,"  he  said,  and,  staring  through  the  win- 
dow, sat  thus  for  about  three  minutes  in  silence.  Then 
he  drew  a  deep  breath  and  again  seated  himself  opposite 
me.  His  face  was  quite  changed,  his  eyes  looked  wretched, 
and  what  might  be  taken  for  a  strange  smile  wrinkled  his 
lips.  "  I  am  a  little  tired,  but  I  will  continue.  There  is 
much  time  yet,  —  day  has  not  broken  yet.  Yes,  sir,"  he 
began,  after  lighting  a  cigarette,  "  she  grew  plump  as  soon 
as  she  stopped  having  children,  and  her  disease,  —  her 
eternal  suffering  on  account  of  the  children,  began  to 
pass  away ;  it  did  not  pass  away  exactly ;  rather,  she 
seemed  to  awaken  as  if  from  an  intoxication,  she  came  to 
her  senses,  and  saw  that  there  was  a  whole  God's  world 
with  its  joys,  which  she  had  forgotten,  but  in  which  she 
did  not  know  how  to  live,  —  a  God's  world,  which  she  did 
not  at  all  understand.  '  I  must  not  miss  the  chance ! 
Time  will  pass,  and  it  will  never  return ! '  Thus,  I 
imagine,  she  reasoned,  or  rather  felt,  nor  could  she  help 
reasoning  and  feeling  hke  this :  she  had  been  educated  to 
consider  nothing  more  worthy  of  attention  in  the  world 
than  love.  She  had  married,  had  tasted  a  little  of  that 
love,  but  nowhere  near  that  which  she  had  promised 
herself,  which  she  had  expected,  and  there  had  been  so 
many  disenchantments,  so  much  suffering,  and  that  unex- 
pected torment,  —  so  many  children  !  This  torment  had 
worn  her  out.  And  now,  thanks  to  obliging  doctors,  she 
had  discovered  th^t  it  was  possible  to  get  along  without 

children, 

370 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  371 

"  She  was  happy  and  conscious  of  it,  and  again  bloomed 
forth  for  that  one  thing  she  knew,  for  love.  But  love  for 
her  husband,  who  had  defiled  himself  by  jealousy  and 
malice  of  every  kind,  was  no  longer  for  her.  She  began 
to  dream  of  another,  a  pure,  new  love,' — at  least  I 
thought  so  about  her.  And  she  began  to  look  around, 
as  though  expecting  something.  I  saw  it  and  could  not 
help  worrying.  It  came  to  be  a  usual  occurrence  for  her 
to  speak  to  me,  even  as  she  had  done  before,  through  a 
third  person,  that  is,  to  speak  to  strangers  while  really 
addressing  me,  and,  without  thinking  that  but  an  hour 
before  she  had  said  the  very  opposite,  to  say  boldly  and 
half  in  earnest  that  maternal  love  was  a  deception,  that 
it  was  not  worth  while  to  sacrifice  life  for  the  children's 
sake,  that  there  was  youth,  and  that  life  ought  to  be 
enjoyed.  She  busied  herself  less  with  the  children,  and 
not  with  such  abandonment  as  before,  but  she  w^as  ever 
more  concerned  about  herself  and  her  exterior,  even 
though  she  concealed  this,  and  about  her  pleasures,  and 
even  about  perfecting  herself.  She  again  took  with 
enthusiasm  to  the  piano,  which  had  been  entirely  given 
up.     This  was  tlie  beginning  of  it  all." 

He  again  turned  to  the  window  with  strained  eyes,  but, 
evidently  making  an  effort  over  himself,  he  immediately 
continued : 

"  Yes,  that  man  made  his  appearance  —  "  He  hesi- 
tated and  once  or  twice  emitted  his  strange  nasal  sounds. 

I  saw  that  it  was  painful  for  him  to  name  that  man,  to 
recall  him,  to  speak  of  him.  But  he  made  an  effort,  and, 
as  if  overcoming  the  impediment  which  w^as  in  his  way, 
continued  with  determination  : 

"  He  was  a  worthless  man,  to  my  thinking,  so  far  as  I 
could  judge  him,  not  on  account  of  the  significance  w^hich 
he  received  in  my  life,  but  because  he  really  was  such. 
The  fact  that  he  was  of  no  account  only  serves  as  a  proof 
of  how  little  amenable  to  reason  she  was.     If  not  he,  it 


372  THE    KREUTZEli   SONATA 

would  have  been  another,  —  but  it  had  to  happen  — " 
He  again  grew  silent.  "  Yes,  he  was  a  musician,  a  violin 
player,  —  not  a  professional  musician,  but  a  semi-pro- 
fessional, a  semi-society  man. 

"  His  father  is  a  landed  proprietor,  a  neighbour  of  my 
father's.  His  father  had  lost  his  fortune,  and  his  chil- 
dren —  there  were  three  boys  —  had  got  up  in  the  world ; 
only  this  youngest  one  had  been  taken  to  his  godmother 
in  Paris.  There  he  was  sent  to  the  Conservatory,  because 
he  had  talent  for  music,  and  he  graduated  from  it  as  a 
violin  player,  taking  part  in  concerts.  This  man  was  —  " 
Apparently  he  was  about  to  say  something  uncomplimen- 
tary of  him,  but  he  restrained  himself  and  rapidly  said, 
"  Well,  I  do  not  know  the  kind  of  life  he  led ;  all  I  know 
is  that  he  made  his  appearance  that  year  in  Eussia  and 
that  he  appeared  at  my  house  — 

"  Almond-shaped,  moist  eyes ;  red,  smiling  lips ;  po- 
maded moustache ;  the  latest  fashionable  hair-dress ;  a 
common,  handsome  face,  what  women  call  not  at  all 
bad ;  of  a  weak,  though  not  misshapen  figure,  with  un- 
usually well-developed  hips,  as  with  women,  and  such  as, 
they  say,  Hottentots  have.  They,  too,  are  musical.  For- 
ward to  the  point  of  familiarity,  so  far  as  possible,  but 
sensitive  and  ever  ready  to  stop  at  the  least  repulse,  with 
the  preservation  of  external  dignity,  and  with  that  pecul- 
iarly Parisian  shade  of  his  button  shoes  and  brightly 
coloured  ties  and  all  that  which  strangers  acquire  in  Paris 
and  which,  on  account  of  its  novelty,  always  affects 
women.  In  his  manners  an  artificial,  external  cheerful- 
ness, —  that  manner,  you  know,  of  saying  everything  by 
hints  and  snatches,  as  though  you  knew  and  remembered 
it  all,  and  were  able  to  supplement  it  yourself. 

"  He,  with  his  music,  was  the  cause  of  everything.  At 
the  trial  the  case  was  presented  as  being  the  result  of 
jealousy.  Not  at  all,  that  is,  it  was  not  at  all  the  reason 
of  it,   though   it  had  something  to  do  with  it.     At  the 


THE    KREUTZEK   SONATA  373 

trial  it  was  decided  that  I  was  a  deceived  husband  and 
that  I  had  killed  her,  while  defending  my  honour  (that  is 
what  they  call  it).  And  so  they  acquitted  me.  At  the 
trial  I  endeavoured  to  explain  things,  but  they  understood 
me  as  wishing  to  rehabilitate  my  wife's  honour. 

"  Her  relations  vnth  the  musician,  whatever  they  may 
have  been,  have  no  meaning  for  me,  nor  for  her  either. 
But  what  has  a  meaning  is  that  which  I  have  told  you 
about,  that  is,  my  swinishness.  Everything  happened 
because  there  was  between  us  that  terrible  abyss  of  which 
I  have  told  you,  that  terrible  tension  of  mutual  hatred, 
when  the  first  cause  was  sufficient  to  produce  a  crisis. 
Our  quarrels  became  toward  the  end  something  terrible, 
and  were  very  startling,  alternating  with  tense  animal 
passion. 

"  If  he  had  not  appeared,  another  man  would  have.  If 
there  had  not  been  the  excuse  of  jealousy,  there  would 
have  been  something  else.  I  insist  that  all  men  who  live 
as  I  did  must  either  take  to  debauch,  or  separate,  or  kill 
themselves,  or  tlieir  wives,  just  as  I  did.  If  this  has  not 
happened  with  them,  it  must  be  taken  as  an  extremely 
rare  exception.  Even  I  have  been,  before  ending  as  I 
did,  several  times  on  the  brink  of  suicide,  and  she,  too, 
had  several  times  almost  poisoned  herself. 


XX. 

"  Yes,  it  was  even  so  before  it  happened. 

"  We  lived  in  a  kind  of  truce,  when  there  seemed  to  be 
no  reason  for  breaking  it.  Suddenly  the  conversation 
touches  upon  a  certain  dog,  of  which  I  say  that  it  received 
a  medal  at  the  show.  She  says  that  it  was  not  a  medal, 
but  honourable  mention.  A  discussion  ensues.  We 
begin  to  jump  from-  one  subject  to  another  and  to  hurl 
accusations  at  each  other :  '  Of  course,  it  is  always  that 
way.'  — '  You  said  —  '  — '  No,  I  did  not  say.'  — '  So  I 
am  lying  ? '  You  feel  that  before  you  know  it  that 
terrible  quarrel  will  be  on,  when  you  will  kill  yourself  or 
her.  You  know  that  it  will  begin  directly,  and  you  are 
afraid  of  it  as  of  fire,  and  you  would  hke  to  restrain  your- 
self, but  fury  takes  possession  of  your  whole  being.  And 
she,  being  in  the  same,  but  even  worse  condition,  purposely 
misinterprets  every  word  of  mine,  and  every  word  of  hers 
is  saturated  with  poison ;  she  stings  me  in  whatever  she 
knows  is  the  most  painful  spot.  The  farther  it  goes 
the  worse  it  gets.  I  cry  out,  '  Shut  up  ! '  or  something 
of  the  kind. 

"  She  jumps  out  of  the  room  and  runs  into  the  nursery. 
I  try  to  keep  her  back,  in  order  to  finish  my  sentence  to 
her,  and  I  seize  her  by  the  arm.  She  pretends  that  I 
have  hurt  her,  and  cries  :  '  Children,  your  father  is  strik- 
ing me  ! '  I  cry  out,  '  Don't  lie  ! '  —  'It  is  not  the  first 
time  ! '  she  cries,  or  something  of  the  kind.  The  children 
rush  to  her.  She  calms  them  down.  I  say,  '  Don't  pre- 
tend ! '  She  says  :  *  For  you  everything  is  pretence.  You 
will  kill  a  person,  and  then  you  will  say  that  the  person 

374 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  375 

pretends.  Now  I  understand  you.  That  is  what  you 
want  to  do ! '  —  '  Oh,  I  wish  you  were  dead  ! '  I  cry.  I 
remember  how  these  terrible  words  frightened  me.  I  had 
not  thought  I  could  say  such  terrible,  coarse  words,  and  I 
wonder  how  they  could  have  escaped  from  me.  I  cry 
these  terrible  words,  and  I  run  into  my  cabinet,  and 
sit  down  and  smoke.  I  hear  her  coming  out  into  the 
antechamber  and  getting  ready  to  depart.  I  ask  her  where 
she  is  going,  but  she  does  not  answer.  '  The  devd  take 
her,'  I  say  to  myself,  returning  to  my  cabinet,  and  I 
again  lie  down  and  smoke.  A  thousand  different  plans 
as  to  how  to  take  my  revenge  on  her  and  get  rid  of  her, 
how  to  mend  it  all  and  make  it  appear  as  though  nothing 
had  happened,  pass  through  my  mind.  I  meditate  over 
this,  and  I  smoke,  and  smoke,  and  smoke.  I  think  of 
running  away  from  her,  of  hiding,  of  going  to  America. 
I  go  so  far  as  to  imagine  how  I  shall  be  rid  of  her  and 
how  nice  it  will  be  when  I  shall  unite  with  another 
beautiful  and  entirely  fresh  woman.  I  shall  get  rid  of 
her  by  her  death,  or  by  being  divorced  from  her,  and  I 
am  planning  how  to  do  it.  I  see  that  I  am  getting 
mixed  up  and  that  I  am  not  thinking  of  what  I  ought  to 
think  about,  and  in  order  not  to  see  that  I  am  not  think- 
ing of  what  I  ought  to  think  about,  I  smoke. 

"  Life  at  home  goes  on.  The  governess  comes  and 
asks  :  '  Where  is  madam  ?  When  will  she  return  ? ' 
The  lackey  asks :  '  Shall  tea  be  served  ? '  I  come  to  the 
dining-room,  and  the  children,  especially  the  eldest,  Liza, 
who  can  comprehend,  look  interrogatively  and  disap- 
provingly at  me.  We  drink  tea  in  silence.  She  is  not 
yet  back.  A  whole  evening  passes,  she  is  not  back,  and 
two  feelings  alternately  arise  in  my  soul :  anger  with 
her  for  tormenting  me  and  the  children  by  her  absence, 
which  will  end  by  her  return,  and  fear  that  she  will  not 
return  and  will  do  something  to  herself.  I  should  like  to 
go  to  find  her.     But  where  shall  I  look  for  her  ?     At  her 


376  THE    KREtJTZER   SONATA 

sister's  ?  It  would  be  stupid  to  go  there  to  ask.  Well, 
if  she  wants  to  tormeut  me,  let  her,  too,  be  tormented. 
That  is  what  she  is  waiting  for.  The  next  time  it  will 
be  only  worse.  What  if  she  is  not  at  her  sister's,  but  is 
doing  or  has  already  done  something  to  herself  ?  Eleven 
o'clock,  twelve.  I  do  not  go  to  the  sleeping-room,  —  it 
is  stupid  to  lie  there  alone  and  wait,  —  I  will  lie  down 
here.  I  want  to  busy  myself  with  something,  to  write  a 
letter,  to  read ;  but  1  am  not  able  to  do  anything.  I  sit 
alone  in  my  cabinet,  and  w^orry,  and  am  angry,  and  listen. 
Three  o'clock,  four  o'clock,  —  she  is  not  back  yet.  Toward 
morning  I  fall  asleep.     I  awake,  —  she  is  not  back. 

"  Everything  in  the  house  goes  as  of  old,  but  all  are 
perplexed,  and  all  look  interrogatively  and  reproachfully 
at  me,  assuming  that  it  is  all  my  fault.  Within  me  is  the 
same  struggle,  —  fury  because  she  torments  me  so,  and 
anxiety  on  her  account. 

"  At  about  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning  her  sister 
comes  as  her  messenger  to  me,  and  there  begins  the 
customary  :  '  She  is  in  a  terrible  state.  What  can  it  be  ? 
Nothing  has  happened  ? '  I  speak  of  the  impossibility  of 
her  disposition,  and  say  that  I  have  not  done  anything. 

" '  It  cannot  remain  as  it  is,'  says  her  sister. 

" '  It  is  all  her  doing,  not  mine,'  I  say.  '  I  will  not 
make  the  first  step.  If  we  are  to  separate,  well  and 
good ! ' 

"  My  sister-in-law  goes  away  without  having  accom- 
plished anything.  I  said  boldly  that  I  would  not  make 
the  first  step  ;  but  the  moment  she  is  gone  and  I  go  out 
and  see  the  poor,  frightened  children,  I  am  ready  to 
make  the  first  step.  I  should  like  to  make  it,  but  I  do  not 
know  how.  Again  I  walk  around,  I  smoke,  I  drink 
brandy  and  wine  at  breakfast,  and  I  reach  the  point  which 
I  unconsciously  wish :  I  do  not  .see  the  stupidity  and 
meanness  of  my  situation. 

"  About  three  o'clock  she  returns.      She  says  nothing 


THE    KKEUTZEK    SONATA  377 

to  me  as  she  meets  me.  I  imagine  that  she  is  pacified, 
and  I  begin  to  tell  her  how  her  reproaches  provoked  me. 
She  says  with  the  same  stern  and  terribly  drawn  face  that 
she  has  come  not  to  make  explauatiuns,  but  to  take  the 
children  away,  that  we  cannot  live  together.  I  tell  her 
that  it  was  not  my  fault,  that  she  made  me  lose  my 
patience.  She  looks  sternly  and  solemnly  at  me,  and 
then  says:  '  Don't  speak  another  word,  or  you  will  regret 
it ! '  I  say  to  her  that  I  can't  now  stand  any  comedy. 
She  shouts  something  which  I  cannot  make  out  and  runs 
to  her  room.  The  key  rings  out  after  her  :  she  has  locked 
herself  in.  I  push  the  door,  • —  there  is  no  answer,  and 
I  go  away  in  fury.  Half  an  hour  later  Liza  comes  to 
me  in  tears.  —  'What,  what  is  the  matter?'  —  'We  do 
not  hear  mamma. ' —  We  go  there.  I  jerk  the  door  with 
all  my  might.  The  bolt  is  not  well  fastened,  and  both 
halves  of  the  door  come  open.  I  w'alk  up  to  the  bed. 
She  is  lying  uncomfortably  on  her  bed,  in  her  skirts  and 
high  shoes.  On  the  table  is  an  empty  opium  bottle.  We 
bring  her  back  to  her  senses.  Tears,  and,  at  last,  we 
make  up.  We  do  not  make  up :  in  the  soul  of  each  is 
the  same  malice  toward  the  other,  with  the  addition  of 
irritation  for  the  pain  inflicted  by  this  quarrel,  which  one 
puts  to  the  account  of  the  other.  But  it  has  to  be  ended 
in  some  way,  and  life  proceeds  as  of  old. 

"  It  was  quarrels  of  this  kind,  and  even  worse  quarrels 
that  we  had  all  the  time,  —  once  a  week,  or  once  a  month, 
and,  at  times,  even  every  day.  And  it  was  all  the  time 
the  same.  Once  I  went  so  far  as  to  provide  myself  with 
a  passport  for  abroad,  —  the  quarrel  had  lasted  two  days. 
But  after  that  there  was  again  a  semblance  of  an  expla- 
nation, a  patched-up  peace,  —  and  I  remained. 


XXI. 

**  So  these  were  our  relations  when  that  man  made  his 
appearance.  He  arrived  at  Moscow,  — ■  his  name  is  Tru- 
khach^vski,  —  and  showed  up  at  my  house.  It  was  in  the 
morning.  I  received  him.  We  had  once  been  on  '  thou ' 
terms.  He  manoeuvred  between  '  thou  '  and  '  you,'  trying 
to  stick  to  '  thou,'  but  I  at  once  set  the  pace  at  '  you,'  and 
he  immediately  submitted.  I  did  not  like  him  from  the 
start.  But,  strange  to  say,  a  certain  strange  and  fatal 
power  urged  me  not  to  repel  and  remove  him,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  to  draw  him  closer  to  me.  There  would 
have  been  nothing  simpler  than  talking  coldly  to  him  and 
seeing  him  out  without  introducing  him  to  my  wife.  No, 
I,  as  it  were  on  purpose,  mentioned  his  playing,  and  said 
that  I  had  been  told  that  he  had  given  up  the  violin. 
He  told  me  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  now  played  more 
than  ever.  He  recalled  what  it  was  I  used  to  play  for- 
merly. I  told  him  that  I  had  given  up  playing,  but  that 
my  wife  played  well.  A  remarkable  thing  happened  ! 
My  relations  with  him  on  that  first  day,  during  the  first 
hour  of  our  meeting,  were  just  such  as  they  could  be  only 
after  all  that  has  taken  place.  There  was  a  certain  re- 
straint in  my  relations  with  him :  I  noticed  every  word, 
every  expression,  uttered  by  him  or  by  me,  and  I  ascribed 
an  importance  to  them. 

"I  introduced  him   to    my   wife.     They   immediately 

began  to  talk  about  music,  and  he  offered  his  services  to 

her,  to  play  with  her.     My  wife,  as  always  during  this 

last  period,   was   extremely   elegant  in   appearance,  and 

enticingly   and   disquietingly  beautiful.     She   apparently 

378 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  379 

took  a  liking  to  him  from  the  start.  Besides,  she  was 
happy  to  have  a  chance  of  playing  with  a  violin,  which 
she  liked  so  much  that  she  used  to  hire  a  violinist  from 
the  theatre  for  the  purpose,  and  her  face  beamed  with 
joy.  But,  upon  looking  at  me,  she  at  once  understood 
my  feeling  and  so  she  changed  her  expression,  and  there 
began  that  game  of  mutual  deception.  I  smiled  a  pleas- 
ant smile,  making  it  appear  that  this  gave  me  pleasure. 
He,  glancing  at  my  wife,  as  all  immoral  men  look  at 
a  pretty  woman,  made  it  appear  that  he  was  interested 
only  in  the  subject  of  the  conversation,  although  it  did 
not  interest  him  in  the  least.  She  tried  to  seem  indiffer- 
ent, but  my  familiar  false  smile  of  a  jealous  man  and 
his  lustful  glance  apparently  excited  her. 

"  I  noticed  that  from  that  first  meeting  on  her  eyes 
were  peculiarly  sparkling,  and,  obviously  on  account  of 
my  jealousy,  there  was  established  between  them  some- 
thing hke  an  electrical  current,  which  provoked  in  them 
a  similarity  of  facial  expressions  and  smiles.  She  blushed 
and  he  blushed.  She  smiled  and  he  smiled.  They  spoke  of 
music,  of  Paris,  of  all  kinds  of  trifles.  He  arose  to  leave, 
and  stood,  smiling,  with  his  hat  on  his  contracting  thigh, 
looking  now  at  her,  and  now  at  me,  as  though  waiting  to 
see  what  we  would  do.  I  remember  that  particular 
moment  because  I  might  have  failed  to  invite  him,  and 
nothing  further  would  have  happened.  But  I  looked  at 
him  and  at  her.  'Don't  imagine  that  I  am  jealous,'  T 
mentally  said  to  her,  '  or  that  I  am  afraid  of  you,'  I  men- 
tally said  to  him,  and  I  invited  him  to  bring  his  violin 
some  evening,  in  order  to  play  with  my  wife.  She  looked 
at  me  in  surprise,  flared  up,  and,  as  though  frightened  at 
something,  began  to  refuse,  saying  that  she  did  not  play 
well  enough.  This  refusal  irritated  me  even  more,  and 
I  insisted  more  urgently. 

"  I  remember  the  strange  feeling  with  which  I  looked 
at  the  back  of  his  head  and  at  his  white  neck,  which 


f> 


80  THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA 


stood  out  under  his  black  hair,  combed  in  both  directions, 
as  he  was  leaving  us  with  a  certain  birdlike,  hopping 
motion.  I  could  not  help  confessing  to  myself  that  the 
presence  of  this  man  tormented  me.  '  It  depends  on  me,' 
thought  I,  '  to  fix  it  in  such  a  way  that  I  shall  never  see 
him  again.  But  doing  so  would  only  be  a  confession  that 
I  am  afraid  of  him.  No,  I  am  not  afraid  of  him,  —  that 
would  be  humiliating,'  I  said  to  myself.  And  so  I  in- 
sisted in  the  antechamber,  knowing  well  that  my  wife 
was  hearing  me,  that  he  should  come  that  same  evening 
with  his  violin.  He  promised  me  he  would,  and  went 
away. 

"  In  the  evening  he  came  with  his  violin,  and  they 
played  together.  But  the  playing  did  not  go  smoothly, 
—  they  did  not  have  the  proper  nuisic,  or  if  they  did 
have  it,  my  wife  could  not  play  it  without  preparation. 
I  was  very  fond  of  music  and  was  in  sympathy  with  their 
playing,  fixing  a  stand  for  him  and  turning  the  music. 
They  managed  to  play  something,  some  songs  without 
words,  and  a  sonata  by  Mozart.  He  played  superbly  ; 
he  possessed  in  the  highest  degree  that  which  is  called 
tone  and,  besides,  a  refined,  noble  taste,  which  was  quite 
out  of  keeping  with  his  character. 

"  He  was,  naturally,  a  much  better  musician  than  my 
wife  ;  he  helped  her  and,  at  the  same  time,  politely  praised 
her  play.  He  bore  himself  very  well.  My  wife  seemed 
to  be  interested  in  nothing  but  the  music,  and  was  very 
simple  and  natural.  But  I,  although  pretending  to  be 
interested  in  the  music,  did  not  cease  all  the  evening  to 
be  consumed  by  jealousy. 

"  I  saw  from  the  very  first  minute  when  their  eyes 
met  that  the  animal  that  was  sitting  in  both  of  them, 
notwithstanding  all  the  conditions  of  position  and  society, 
was  asking,  '  May  I  ? '  and  answering,  '  Oh,  yes,  certainly.' 
1  saw  that  he  had  not  at  all  expected  to  find  in  my  wife, 
in  a  Moscow  lady,  such  an  attractive  woman,  and  that 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  381 

he  was  glad  of  it.  He  did  not  have  the  least  doubt  that 
she  was  ivilUmj.  The  whole  question  revolved  only  on 
keeping  the  intolerable  husband  out  of  the  way.  If  I 
myself  had  been  pure,  I  should  not  have  understood  it ; 
but  I  used  to  think  the  same  way  about  women,  before  I 
was  married,  and  so  I.  read  in  his  soul  as  in  a  book. 

"  What  tormented  me  more  especially  was  that  I  had 
convinced  myself  that  she  had  no  other  feeling  for  me 
than  that  of  constant  irritation,  rarely  interrupted  by 
the  usual  sensuality,  and  that  this  man,  by  his  external 
elegance  and  novelty,  but  especially  by  his  unquestionably 
great  musical  talent,  by  the  proximity  due  to  their  play 
in  common,  by  the  influence  produced  on  impressionable 
natures  by  music,  particularly  by  the  violin,  —  that  this 
man  must  of  necessity  not  only  be  to  her  liking,  but  that 
he,  without  the  least  wavering,  must  vanquish,  crush,  and 
twist  her,  wind  her  into  a  rope,  make  of  her  anything  he 
pleased.  I  could  not  help  seeing  all  this,  and  I  suffered 
terribly.  Yet,  in  spite  of  it,  or  maybe  on  that  very  ac- 
count, some  power  against  my  will  made  me  be  not  only 
very  polite,  but  even  gracious  to  him.  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  did  so  for  my  wife's  sake,  or  for  his,  in  order  to 
show  that  I  was  not  afraid  of  him,  or  for  my  own  sake,  in 
order  to  deceive  myself,  —  however  it  may  be,  I  could  not 
be  simple  with  him  from  my  first  relations  with  him.  In 
order  not  to  surrender  myself  to  my  desire  of  killing  him 
on  the  spot,  I  had  to  be  kind  to  him.  I  gave  him  costly 
wines  to  drink  at  supper,  went  into  ecstasies  over  his 
playing,  spoke  with  him  with  an  unusually  kindly  smile, 
and  invited  him  to  dinner  for  the  coming  Sunday,  when 
he  could  again  play  with  my  wife.  I  told  him  I  would 
call  together  a  few  of  my  acquaintances,  lovers  of  music, 
to  listen  to  his  playing.     And  thus  came  the  end." 

Pozdnyshev  in  great  agitation  changed  his  position  and 
emitted  his  peculiar  sound. 

"The  presence  of  this  man  affected  me  in  a  strange 


382  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

manner,"  he  began  once  more,  evidently  making  an  effort 
to  be  calm. 

"  Two  or  three  days  later  I  returned  home  from  some 
exhibition.  I  entered  the  antechamber,  and  a  heavy  sen- 
sation overcame  me :  I  felt  as  though  a  stone  had  been 
rolled  upon  my  heart,  and  I  was  unable  to  account  for 
this  sensation.  There  was  something  which  reminded  me 
of  him,  as  I  passed  through  the  antechamber.  Only  when 
I  had  reached  the  cabinet  did  I  find  an  explanation  of  it, 
and  I  returned  to  the  antechamber  to  verify  it.  Yes,  I 
was  not  mistaken :  it  was  his  overcoat.  (Everything 
which  came  in  contact  with  him  I  noticed  very  atten- 
tively, without  being  conscious  of  doing  so.)  I  asked 
whether  he  was  there,  and  I  found  he  was.  I  went  to 
the  parlour,  not  through  the  drawing-room,  but  through 
the  children's  study.  My  daughter,  Liza,  was  sitting  over 
a  book,  and  the  nurse  was  with  the  baby  at  the  table, 
spinning  a  lid  or  something.  The  door  to  the  parlour  was 
closed,  and  I  there  heard  an  even  arpeggio  and  his  voice 
and  hers.  I  listened,  but  could  not  make  out  what  it 
was. 

"  *  Evidently  the  sounds  of  the  piano  are  on  purpose  to 
drown  their  words  and  kisses,'  I  thought,  — '  perhaps.' 
O  Lord,  what  a  storm  rose  within  me !  Terror  takes  pos- 
session of  me  as  I  think  of  what  animal  was  then  living 
within  me !  My  heart  was  compressed  and  stopped,  and 
then  began  to  beat  as  with  a  hammer.  The  chief  feeling 
as  during  every  rage,  was  that  of  compassion  for  myself, 
'  Before  the  children,  before  the  nurse  ! '  I  thought.  I 
must  have  been  terrible,  because  Liza  looked  at  me  with 
strange  eyes.  *  What  had  I  better  do  ? '  I  asked  myself. 
'  Had  I  better  go  in  ?  I  can't,  —  for  God  knows  what  I 
will  do  there.  Nor  can  I  go  away.  The  nurse  is  looking 
at  me  as  though  she  understood  my  situation.  I  must 
go  in,'  I  said  to  myself,  and  rapidly  openr-d  the  door.  He 
was  sitting  at  the  piano  and  was  making  these  arpeggios 


to' 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  383 

with  his  large,  white,  arched  fingers.  She  was  standing 
at  the  corner  of  the  grand  over  some  open  music.  She 
was  the  first  to  see  or  hear  me,  and  she  glanced  at  me.  I 
do  not  know  whether  she  was  frightened,  or  pretended 
not  to  be  frightened,  or  really  was  not  frightened,  but  she 
did  not  shudder,  nor  budge,  —  she  only  blushed,  and  that, 
too,  after  some  time. 

" '  How  glad  I  am  you  have  come  !  We  have  not  yet 
decided  what  to  play  on  Sunday,'  she  said  to  me  in  a 
tone  of  voice  which  she  would  not  have  employed  if  we 
had  been  alone.  This  fact  and  her  saying  '  we '  of  herself 
and  of  him  exasperated  me.  I  silently  exchanged  greet- 
ings with  him. 

"  He  pressed  my  hand  and  immediately  began  to  ex- 
plain to  me,  with  a  smile  which  I  interpreted  as  ridicule, 
that  he  had  brought  me  some  music  for  the  Sunday,  and 
that  they  could  not  agree  what  to  play  :  whether  it  was  to 
be  more  difficult  and  classical  music,  more  especially  a 
sonata  by  Beethoven  with  the  violin,  or  some  light 
things.  Everything  was  so  natural  and  simple  that  it 
was  impossible  to  find  any  fault  with  anything ;  at  the 
same  time  I  was  convinced  that  it  was  all  an  untruth, 
and  that  they  had  come  to  some  kind  of  an  agreement 
how  to  deceive  me. 

"  One  of  the  most  agonizing  situations  for  a  jealous 
man  (in  our  social  life  all  men  are  jealous)  is  caused  by 
certain  social  conditions  under  which  the  greatest  and 
most  perilous  proximity  between  man  and  woman  is  per- 
mitted. One  would  become  a  laughing-stock  of  people,  if 
one  were  to  be  set  against  the  close  proximity  at  balls,  or 
the  doctors'  proximity  to  their  female  patients,  or  the 
proximity  during  occupations  with  art,  painting,  or  more 
especially  with  music.  A  certain  proximity  is  necessary 
there,  and  there  is  nothing  prejudicial  in  this  proximity  : 
only  a  foolish,  jealous  man  can  see  anything  undesirable 
in  it.     And  yet,  everybody  knows  that  the  greater  part 


384  THE    KEEUTZER    SONATA 

of  all  cases  of  adultery  in  our  society  are  committed  by 
means  of  such  occupations,  especially  by  means  of  music. 

"  I  evidently  confused  them  by  the  confusion  which 
was  apparent  in  me :  I  was  for  a  long  time  not  able  to 
say  anything.  I  was  like  an  upturned  bottle,  from  which 
the  water  does  not  flow,  because  it  is  too  full,  I  wanted 
to  call  him  names,  and  drive  him  out,  but,  instead,  I  felt 
that  I  must  again  be  gracious  and  pleasant  to  him.  And 
so  I  was.  I  acted  as  though  I  approved  of  everything, 
submitting  to  that  strange  feeling  which  caused  me  to 
treat  him  with  greater  kindness  in  the  measure  as  his 
presence  tormented  me.  I  told  him  that  I  depended  on 
his  taste,  and  that  I  advised  her  to  do  likewise.  He  re- 
mained long  enough  to  wear  off  the  unpleasant  impression 
produced  by  my  sudden  entrance  into  the  room  with  a 
frightened  face  and  by  my  silence,  and  went  away  pre- 
tending to  have  decided  what  to  play  on  the  next  day.  I 
was  fully  convinced  that,  in  comparison  with  that  which 
interested  them,  the  question  what  to  play  was  quite  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  them. 

"  I  took  him  to  the  antechamber  with  especial  politeness. 
(Why  not  see  off  a  man  who  has  come  in  order  to  break 
the  peace  and  ruin  the  happiness  of  a  whole  family  ! )  I 
pressed  his  white,  soft  hand  with  unusual  kindness. 


XXII. 

"  I  DID  not  speak  with  her  all  that  day,  —  I  could  not. 
Her  proximity  to  me  provoked  in  me  such  a  hatred  of 
her,  that  I  was  afraid  of  myself.  At  dinner,  she  asked  me, 
in  the  presence  of  the  children,  when  I  was  going  to  leave. 
I  had  to  go  next  week  to  the  county  to  attend  a  meeting.- 
I  told  her  when.  She  asked  me  whether  I  needed  any- 
thing for  my  way.  I  did  not  answer,  and  silently  sat  at 
the  table,  and  silently  went  to  my  cabinet.  During  that 
last  period  she  never  came  into  my  room,  especially  not 
then.  I  was  lying  down  in  my  cabinet  and  fretting. 
Suddenly  I  heard  a  familiar  tread.  And  suddenly  a 
terrible,  monstrous  thought  passed  through  my  mind  that 
she,  like  the  wife  of  Uriah,  wanted  to  conceal  her  accom- 
plished sin,  and  that  it  was  for  this  purpose  that  she  was 
coming  to  my  room  at  such  an  untimely  hour.  'Is  it 
possible  she  is  coming  here  ? '  I  thought,  listening  to  her 
approaching  steps.  '  If  she  is  coming  here,  then  I  am 
right.'  And  in  my  soul  there  rose  an  inexpressible  hatred 
of  her.  jSTearer,  nearer  the  steps  came.  '  Will  she  really 
pass  by  and  go  into  the  parlour  ? '  No,  the  door  creaked, 
and  there  stood  her  tall,  beautiful  figure,  and  in  her  face 
and  eyes  there  was  timidity  and  supplication,  which  she 
tried  to  conceal,  but  which  I  saw,  and  the  meaning  of 
which  I  understood.  I  almost  choked,  —  I  so  long  held 
my  breath,  —  and,  continuing  to  look  at  her,  I  grasped 
the  cigarette-holder  and  beo-an  to  smoke. 

" '  How  does  this  look  ?     I  come  to  sit  with  you  awhile, 
and  you  smoke,'  and  she  seated  herself  near  me  on  the 

385 


386  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

divan,  leaning  toward  me.  I  moved  away  so  as  not  to 
come  in  contact  with  her. 

" '  I  see  you  are  dissatisfied  with  my  playing  on  Sunday/ 
she  said. 

" '  I  am  not  in  the  least/  I  said. 

" '  But  I  see  it.' 

" '  Let  me  congratulate  you  if  you  do.  All  I  see  is  that 
you  are  acting  like  a  coquette.  You  find  pleasure  in  all 
kinds  of  baseness,  but  to  me  this  is  terrible ! ' 

" '  If  you  are  going  to  swear  like  a  cabman,  then  I  will 
go  away.' 

" '  Go,  but  know  that  if  you  do  not  respect  the  honour 
of  the  family,  I  will  not  respect  you  (the  devil  take  you), 
but  will  guard  the  honour  of  the  family.' 

" '  What  is  the  matter,  what  ? ' 

" '  Get  out,  for  the  Lord's  sake,  get  out ! ' 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  she  pretended  that  she  did  not 
understand  or  whether  she  really  did  not  understand,  — 
in  any  case  she  was  offended,  grew  angry,  and  did  not  go 
away,  but  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

" '  You  are  absolutely  impossible,'  she  said.  '  With 
any  one  of  your  character  not  even  an  angel  could  get 
along,'  and,  as  always,  wishing  to  sting  me  in  the  most 
painful  manner,  she  reminded  me  of  my  action  toward  my 
sister  (she  referred  to  an  incident  when  I  lost  my  patience 
with  my  sister  and  told  her  a  lot  of  rude  things ;  she 
knew  that  it  tormented  me  and  so  she  stung  me  with  it). 
'  After  this  nothing  from  you  will  surprise  me,'  she  said. 

"  '  Yes,  she  will  offend,  humiliate,  disgrace  me,  and  then 
she  will  make  me  guilty  of  it,'  I  said  to  myself,  and  I 
was  suddenly  seized  by  such  terrible  rage  against  her  as 
I  had  never  experienced  before. 

"I  wanted  now  for  the  first  time  to  give  a  physical 
expression  to  this  rage.  I  jumped  up  and  moved  toward 
her ;  but  just  as  I  jumped  up  1  remember  that  I  became 
conscious  of  my  rage  and  asked  myself,  '  Is  it  right  to 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  387 

abandon  myself  to  this  feeling  ? '  and  immediately  replied 
to  myself  that  it  was  right,  that  this  would  frighten  her, 
and  so,  instead  of  opposing  myself  to  this  rage,  I  began  to 
fan  it  in  myself  and  to  take  pleasure  in  its  spreading  more 
and  more  in  me. 

" '  Get  away,  or  I  will  kill  you ! '  I  shouted,  walking 
up  to  her  and  grasping  her  arm.  I  consciously  increased 
the  intonations  of  rage  in  my  voice,  as  I  was  saying  this. 
I  must  have  been  terrible,  because  she  was  so  intimidated 
that  she  did  not  have  sufficient  strength  to  leave,  and  only 
said :  '  Vasya,  what  is  the  matter  with  you,  what  is  the 
matter  ? '  — '  Get  out ! '  I  bellowed  louder  still.  '  You 
will  drive  me  to  insanity.     I  will  not  answer  for  myself ! ' 

"  Having  given  the  r«ins  to  my  fury,  I  was  intoxicated 
by  it  and  wanted  to  do  something  unusual,  which  would 
show  the  highest  degree  of  my  fury.  I  just  burned  to 
strike  and  kill  her,  but  I  knew  that  this  could  not  be,  and 
so,  to  give  full  vent  to  my  rage,  I  grabbed  a  paper-weight 
from  the  table  and,  crying  once  more, '  Get  out ! '  I  hurled 
it  against  the  floor  beyond  her.  I  aimed  purposely  beyond 
her.  Then  she  started  to  leave  the  room,  but  stopped  at 
the  door.  And  here,  while  she  was  able  to  see  it  (I  did 
it  that  she  should  see  it),  I  picked  up  a  number  of  things 
from  the  table,  candlesticks,  the  inkstand,  and  began  to 
throw  them  on  the  floor,  continuing  to  cry  out :  '  Get 
out !  Go  away  !  I  will  not  answer  for  myself  ! '  She 
went  away,  and  I  immediately  stopped. 

"  An  hour  later  the  nurse  came  and  informed  me  that 
my  wife  was  in  hysterics.  I  went  to  her  :  she  was  sobbing 
and  laughing ;  she  was  unable  to  say  a  word,  and  con- 
tinually shuddered  with  her  whole  body.  There  was  no 
pretence  there :  she  was  really  HI. 

"  Toward  morning  she  quieted  down,  and  we  made  up 
under  the  influence  of  that  feeling  which  we  called  love. 

"  In  the  morning,  when,  after  the  pacification,  I  con- 
fessed to  her  that  I  was  jealous  of  Trukhachevski,  she  was 


388  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

not  in  the  least  embarrassed,  but  laughed  out  in  the  most 
natural  manner,  —  so  strange,  so  she  said,  did  the  possi- 
bility of  being  infatuated  with  such  a  man  seem  to  her. 

" '  Can  a  decent  woman  have  any  other  feeling  for  such 
a  man  than  the  pleasure  derived  by  music  ?  If  you  want 
me  to,  I  am  ready  never  to  see  him  again.  Not  even 
on  Sunday,  even  though  guests  have  been  invited.  Write 
to  him  that  I  am  not  well,  and  all  is  ended.  It  is  disgust- 
ing to  think  that  anybody,  but  especially  he,  should 
imagine  that  he  is  a  dangerous  man.  I  am  too  proud  to 
allow  any  one  to  tliink  so.' 

"  She  was  not  telling  an  untruth.  She  believed  all  she 
was  saying  :  she  hoped  with  these  words  to  ehcit  in  herself 
contempt  for  him  and  in  this  way  to  defend  herself  against 
him,  but  she  did  not  succeed.  Everything  was  against 
her,  more  particularly  that  accursed  music.  So  all  was 
ended,  and  on  Sunday  the  guests  arrived  and  they  again 
played  together. 


XXIIT. 

"  I  THINK  it  is  superfluous  to  say  that  I  was  very  vain- 
glorious :  if  we  are  not  to  be  vainglorious  in  our  habitual 
life,  then  there  is  no  cause  for  living  at  all.  Well,  on 
that  Sunday  I  entered  with  zest  into  the  preparations  for 
the  dinner  and  soiree  with  the  music.  1  myself  bought 
things  for  the  dinner  and  called  the  guests. 

"  At  about  six  o'clock  the  guests  arrived,  and  he  appeared 
in  evening  dress  with  diamond  studs,  showing  poor  taste. 
He  bore  himself  with  ease,  replied  to  everything  hurriedly 
and  with  a  slight  smile  of  agreement  and  comprehension, 
—  you  know,  with  that  especial  expression  which  says 
that  everything  you  may  do  or  say  is  just  what  he  ex- 
pected. Everything  which  was  improper  in  him  I  now 
took  notice  of  with  particular  pleasure,  because  all  this 
served  to  calm  me  and  show  me  that  he  stood  for  my  wife 
on  a  low  level  to  which,  as  she  said,  she  could  not  de- 
scend. I  did  not  allow  myself  to  be  jealous.  In  the  first 
place,  my  torment  had  been  too  great  and  I  had  to  rest 
from  it ;  in  the  second,  I  wished  to  believe  the  assertions 
of  my  wife,  and  I  did  beheve  them.  And  yet,  although 
I  was  not  jealous,  I  was  unnatural  toward  him  and  toward 
her,  and  during  the  dinner  and  the  first  part  of  the  even- 
ing entertainment,  before  the  music  began,  I  continued  to 
watch  their  motions  and  glances. 

"The  dinner  was  like  all  dinners,  —  dull  and  stiff. 
The  music  began  quite  early.  Oh,  how  I  remember 
all  the  details  of  that  evening !  I  remember  how  he 
brought  the  violin,  opened  the  case,  lifted  the  cover 
which  had  been  embroidered  for  him  by  a  lady    took 


390  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

out  the  violin,  and  began  to  tune  it.  I  remember  how 
my  wife  sat  down,  feigning  indifference,  under  which 
1  saw  her  conceal  her  timidity,  —  timidity  mainly  as  to 
her  own  ability,  —  how  she  sat  down  w'ith  a  look  of  indif- 
ference at  the  piano,  and  there  began  the  usual  la  on  the 
piano,  the  pizzicato  of  the  violin,  and  the  placing  of 
the  music.  I  remember  how,  then,  they  looked  at  each 
other,  casting  a  glance  at  the  seated  guests,  how  they  said 
something  one  to  the  other,  and  how  then  it  began.  He 
took  the  first  chords.  His  face  grew  serious,  stern,  and 
sympathetic,  and,  listening  to  his  tones,  he  picked  the 
strings  with  cautious  fingers.  The  piano  replied  to  him. 
And  it  began  —  " 

Pozdnyshev  stopped  and  several  times  in  succession 
emitted  his  sounds.  He  wanted  to  speak,  but  he  snuffled 
and  again  stopped. 

"  They  were  playing,  the  Kreutzer  Sonata  by  Beet- 
hoven," he  continued.  "  Do  you  know  the  first  presto  ? 
You  do  ? "  he  exclaimed.  "  Ugh  !  Ugh  !  That  sonata 
is  a  terrible  thing,  particularly  that  part  of  it.  Music,  in 
general,  is  a  terrible  thing.  I  cannot  understand  what  it 
is.  What  is  music  ?  What  does  it  do  ?  And  why  does 
it  do  that  which  it  does  ?  They  say  that  music  acts  upon 
the  soul  by  elevating  it,  —  nonsense,  a  lie!  It  acts,  acts 
terribly,  —  I  am  speaking  for  myself,  —  but  not  at  all  by 
elevating.  It  neither  elevates  nor  humbles  the  soul,  —  it 
irritates  it.  How  shall  I  tell  it  to  you  ?  Music  makes 
me  forget  myself  and  my  real  condition ;  it  transfers 
me  to  another,  not  my  own  condition :  it  seems  to  me 
that  under  the  influence  of  music  I  feel  that  which  I  really 
do  not  feel,  that  I  understand  that  which  I  do  not  under- 
stand, that  I  can  do  that  which  I  cannot  do.  I  explain 
this  by  supposing  that  music  acts  like  yawning,  like 
laughter :  I  do  not  w^ant  to  sleep,  but  I  yawn  seeing 
people  yawn ;  I  have  no  cause  for  laughing,  but  I  laugh 
hearing  others  laugh. 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  391 

"  This  music  immediately,  directly  transfers  me  to  the 
mental  condition  in  which  he  was  who  wrote  that  music. 
I  am  merged  in  his  soul,  and  am  with  him  carried  from 
one  condition  to  another ;  but  I  do  not  know  why  this 
happens  with  me.  He  who  wrote  it,  say  the  Kreutzer 
Sonata,  —  Beethoven,  —  he  knew  why  he  was  in  such 
a  mood ;  this  mood  led  him  to  do  certain  acts,  and  so  this 
mood  had  some  meaning  for  him,  whereas  for  me  it  has 
none.  Therefore  music  only  irritates,  —  it  does  not  end. 
Well,  they  play  a  military  march,  and  the  soldiers  march 
under  its  strain,  and  the  music  comes  to  an  end ;  they 
play  dance  music,  and  I  finish  dancing,  and  the  music 
comes  to  an  end ;  well,  they  sing  a  mass,  I  receive  the 
Holy  Sacrament,  and  the  music  comes  to  an  end.  But 
here  there  is  only  an  irritation,  but  that  which  is  to  be 
done  under  this  irritation  is  absent.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  music  is  so  terrible  and  often  acts  so  dreadfully.  In 
China  music  is  a  state  matter.  That  is  the  way  it  ought 
to  be.  How  can  any  one  who  wishes  be  allowed  to  hyp- 
notize another,  or  many  persons,  and  then  do  with  them 
what  he  pleases  ?  And  especially  how  can  they  allow 
any  kind  of  an  immoral  man  to  be  the  hypnotizer  ? 

"  Into  whose  hands  has  this  terrible  power  fallen  ?  Let 
us  take  for  example  the  Kreutzer  Sonata.  How  can  one 
play  the  first  presto  in  a  drawing-room  amidst  ladies  in 
decollete  garments  ?  To  play  this  presto,  to  applaud  it, 
and  then  to  eat  ice-cream  and  talk  about  the  last  bit  of 
gossip  ?  These  things  should  be  played  only  under  cer- 
tain important,  significant  circumstances,  and  then  when 
certain  acts,  corresponding  to  tliis  music,  are  to  be  per- 
formed, and  that  is  to  be  done  which  the  music  demands 
of  you.  But  the  provocation  of  energy  and  feeling  which 
do  not  correspond  to  the  time  or  place,  and  which  find  no 
expression,  cannot  help  acting  perniciously.  Upon  me,  at 
least,  it  had  a  most  terrible  effect :  it  seemed  to  me  as 
though  entirely  new  feeUngs,  new  possibilities,  of  which 


392  THE    KEEUTZER    SONATA 

I  had  never  knowu  before,  were  revealed  to  me.  '  Yes, 
that  is  so,  it  is  quite  different  from  what  1  used  to  think 
and  feel  about  it ;  it  is  like  this,'  a  voice  seemed  to  say 
within  me.  What  this  new  thing  was  which  I  had  dis- 
covered I  was  not  able  to  explain  to  myself,  but  the  con- 
sciousness of  this  new  condition  was  a  pleasurable  one. 
All  the  people  present  —  among  them  my  wife  and  he  — 
presented  themselves  in  a  new  light  to  me. 

"  After  the  allegro  they  played  the  beautiful,  but 
common,  and  not  new  andante  with  trite  variations, 
and  a  very  weak  finale.  After  that  they  played,  at 
the  guests'  request,  an  elegy  by  Ernst,  and  some  other 
trifles.  All  that  was  very  nice,  but  it  did  not  produce 
on  me  one-hundredth  part  of  the  impression  which  the 
first  had  produced.  All  this  took  place  on  the  back- 
ground of  the  impression  which  had  been  evoked  by  the 
first  piece. 

"  I  felt  light  and  happy  on  that  evening.  I  had  never 
before  seen  my  wife  as  she  was  on  that  evening.  Those 
sparkling  eyes,  that  severity  and  expressiveness  while  she 
was  playing,  and  that  complete  dissolution,  if  I  may  so 
call  it,  and  that  feeble,  pitiable,  and  blissful  smile  after 
they  were  through  !  I  saw  it  all,  but  ascribed  no  other 
meaning  to  it  than  that  she  was  experiencing  the  same 
as  I,  and  that  to  her,  as  to  me,  there  were  revealed,  or,  as 
it  were,  brought  back,  new,  unfelt  sensations.  The  even- 
ing came  to  a  successful  end  and  all  departed. 

"  Knowing  that  I  was  to  leave  in  two  days  to  attend 
to  the  meeting,  Trukhach^vski  at  leaving  said  that  he 
hoped  at  his  next  visit  to  repeat  the  pleasure  of  the 
present  evening.  From  this  I  could  conclude  that  he  did 
not  consider  it  possible  to  be  in  my  house  during  my 
absence,  and  this  pleased  me. 

"  It  turned  out  that  since  I  should  not  be  back  before 
his  departure,  we  should  not  meet  again. 

"  I  for  the  first  time  pressed  his  hand  with  real  joy  and 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  393 

thanked  him  for  the  pleasure  he  had  given  me.  He,  too, 
bade  farewell  to  my  wife.  Their  farewell  seemed  to  me 
most  natural  and  proper.  Everything  was  beautiful.  My 
wife  and  I  were  both  very  much  satisfied  with  the 
evening. 


XXIV. 

"  Two  days  later  I  left  for  the  meeting  in  the  county, 
bidding  my  wife  farewell  in  the  best  and  quietest  of 
moods. 

"  In  the  county  there  was  always  a  great  deal  to  do, 
and  there  was  a  special  life,  a  special  world  by  itself. 
There,  in  the  office,  I  passed  ten  hours  a  day  for  two  days 
in  succession.  On  the  second  day  they  brought  me  a 
letter  from  my  wife.     I  read  it  at  once. 

"  She  wi'ote  about  the  children,  about  uncle,  about  the 
nurse,  about  purchases,  and,  among  other  things,  she 
mentioned,  as  a  most  natural  occurrence,  that  Trukha- 
chevski  had  called  bringing  the  promised  music,  and 
that  he  had  promised  to  play  again  with  her,  but  that  she 
had  refused. 

"  I  did  not  remember  his  having  promised  to  bring  any 
music :  it  seemed  to  me  that  he  had  then  bidden  her 
farewell  for  good,  and  so  this  startled  me.  I  was,  how- 
ever, so  busy  that  I  had  no  time  to  think  about  it,  and 
only  in  the  evening,  when  I  returned  to  my  room,  did  I 
re-read  the  letter. 

"  Not  only  had  Trukhach^vski  been  at  my  house  during 
my  absence,  but  the  whole  tenor  of  the  letter  seemed  to 
be  strained.  The  furious  beast  of  jealousy  roared  in  its 
kennel  and  wanted  to  leap  out,  but  I  was  afraid  of  that 
beast  and  I  quickly  locked  it  up.  '  What  an  abominable 
feeling  this  jealousy  is!'  said  I  to  myself.  'What  can 
there  be  more  natural  than  what  she  writes  ? ' 

"  So  I  lay  down  in  my  bed  and  began  to  think  of  the 
affairs  which  I  had  to  attend  to  on  the  following  day. 


THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA  395 

During  these  meetings  I  could  not  easily  fall  asleep,  in  a 
strange  bed,  but  this  time  I  fell  asleep  at  once.  And,  as 
sometimes  happens,  you  know,  you  feel  a  kind  of  electric 
shock  and  you  wake  up.  So  I  awoke.  I  awoke  with  the 
thought  of  her,  of  my  carnal  love  for  her,  and  of  Tmkha- 
ch^vski,  and  that  everything  was  at  an  end  between  Mm 
and  her.  Terror  and  rage  compressed  my  heart.  But  I 
began  to  reason  with  myself.  '  What  nonsense,'  said  I  to 
myself,  '  there  is  no  cause  for  it,  —  there  is  nothing  and 
has  been  nothing.  And  how  can  I  so  lower  her  and  my- 
self, by  supposing  such  horrors  ?  He  —  something  in  the 
nature  of  a  hired  fiddler,  known  as  a  worthless  man,  and 
a  worthy  w^oman,  a  respected  mother  of  a  family,  my  wife  ! 
What  absurdity  ! '  was  what  presented  itself  to  me  on  one 
side.  '  Why  can't  it  be  ? '  was  what  presented  itself  on 
the  other.  'Why  could  there  not  be  that  simplest  and 
most  intelligible  thing  in  the  name  of  which  I  married 
her,  the  same  thing  in  the  name  of  which  I  lived  with 
her,  which  alone  I  needed  in  her,  and  which,  therefore, 
others  could  need,  and  that  musician,  too?  He  is  un- 
married, healthy  (I  remembered  how  he  crunched  the 
gristle  in  the  cutlet  and  with  what  eager  red  hps  he 
clasped  the  wine-glass),  well-fed,  smooth,  and  not  only 
unprincipled,  but  obviously  following  the  rule  to  make 
use  of  every  pleasure  which  presents  itself.  And  between 
them  there  is  the  bond  of  music,  of  the  most  refined 
sensual  lust.  What  can  keep  him  back  ?  She  ?  Who  is 
she  ?  She  is  the  same  mystery  she  has  always  been.  I 
do  not  know  her.  I  know  her  only  as  an  animal.  And 
nothing  can  nor  must  keep  back  an  animal,' 

"  Only  then  for  the  first  time  did  I  recall  their  faces 
on  that  evening,  when,  after  the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  they 
played  some  impassioned  piece,  —  I  do  not  remember  by 
whom,  —  impassioned  to  the  point  of  obscenity.  '  How 
could  I  have  left  ? '  I  said  to  myself,  recalling  their  faces. 
'  Was  it  not  clear  that  everything  had  taken  place  between 


396  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

them  on  that  evening  ?  And  was  it  not  evident  that  even 
on  that  evening  there  was  no  barrier  between  them,  and 
that  both  of  them,  but  especially  she,  experienced  a  certain 
measure  of  shame  after  what  had  happened  to  them  ?  I 
remember  how  she  smiled  feebly,  pitiably,  and  blissfully, 
wiping  off  the  perspiration  from  her  heated  face,  as  I  went 
u])  to  the  piano.  They  even  then  avoided  looking  at  each 
oilier,  and  only  at  supper,  as  lie  poured  out  a  glass  of 
water  for  her,  did  they  glance  at  each  other  and  smile  an 
imperceptible  smile.' 

*'  I  now  in  terror  recalled  that  glance  of  theirs  with  the 
barely  perceptible  smile,  which  I  had  accidentally  noticed. 
'  Yes,  all  is  ended,'  one  voice  said  to  me,  and  immediately 
the  other  voice  said  something  quite  different :  '  You  are 
working  under  a  delusion,  —  this  cannot  be.'  It  made  me 
shudder  to  lie  in  the  dark.  I  struck  a  match,  and  I  felt 
terribly  in  that  small  room  with  the  yellow  wall-paper.  I 
lighted  a  cigarette,  and,  as  is  always  the  case  when  I  move 
in  one  and  the  same  circle  of  insoluble  contradictions,  I 
smoked ;  I  smoked  one  cigarette  after  another,  in  order  to 
be  befogged  and  not  to  notice  the  contradictions. 

"  I  did  not  fall  asleep  all  night  long,  and  having  decided 
at  five  o'clock  that  I  could  not  remain  any  longer  in  this 
state  of  tension  and  that  I  must  go  home,  I  arose,  woke 
the  janitor,  who  was  attending  to  me,  and  sent  him  for 
the  horses.  I  sent  a  letter  to  the  meeting  saying  that  I 
was  called  back  to  Moscow  on  urgent  business,  and  asking 
a  member  to  take  my  chair.  At  eight  o'clock  I  sat  down 
in  the  tarautas  and  started." 


XXV. 

The  conductor  came  in,  and,  noticing  that  the  candle 
was  burning  low,  put  it  out,  without  substituting  another 
for  it.  Day  began  to  break.  Pdzdnyshev  was  silent, 
drawing  deep  sighs  as  long  as  the  conductor  was  in  the 
car.  He  continued  his  story  only  when  the  conductor 
had  left,  and  in  the  half-dark  car  could  be  heard  only 
the  rattle  of  the  windows  of  the  moving  car  and  the  even 
snoring  of  the  clerk.  In  the  twilight  of  the  dawn  I  could 
not  see  Pozdnyshev's  face  at  all.  I  could  hear  only  his 
ever  more  agitated  and  suffering  voice. 

"  I  had  to  travel  thirty -live  miles  in  a  carriage  and 
eight  hours  by  train.  It  was  nice  travelling  in  the 
carriage.  It  was  a  frosty  autumn  day  with  a  bright  sun, 
—  you  know,  that  period  of  the  year  when  the  ruts  are 
clearly  defined  on  the  muddy  road.  The  roads  are  smooth, 
the  light  is  bright,  the  air  bracing.  It  was  a  pleasure  to 
ride  in  the  tarantas.  WTien  it  was  day  and  I  had  started, 
I  felt  easier.  As  I  looked  at  the  horses,  at  the  fields,  and 
at  the  passers-by,  I  forgot  whither  I  was  travelling.  At 
times  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  merely  journeying,  and 
that  there  was  nothing  of  that  which  had  provoked  me. 
It  was  a  relief  to  me  to  be  able  to  forget  myself  thus. 
Whenever  I  recalled  where  I  was  travelling  to,  I  said  to 
myself  :  '  There  will  be  time  then,  but  now  do  not  think  ! ' 

"  In  the  middle  of  the  road  there  happened  an  accident 
which  detained  me  and  still  more  diverted  my  attention : 
the  tarantas  broke  and  had  to  be  repaired.  This  break- 
down was  of  great  importance  in  that  it  made  me  arrive 
at  Moscow,  not  at  five  o'clock,  as  I  had  expected,  but  at 

397 


398  THE   KREUTZER   SONATA 

twelve,  and  at  home  at  one,  as  I  missed  the  express  and 
had  to  take  the  passenger  train.  The  search  for  a  cart, 
the  mending,  the  settling  of  bills,  the  tea  at  the  inn,  the 
talks  with  the  janitor,  —  all  that  still  more  diverted  my 
attention.  At  evening  twilight  all  was  doue,  and  I  started 
once  more.  In  the  night  it  was  pleasanter  to  travel  than 
in  daytime.  The  new  moon  was  up ;  there  was  a  slight 
frost ;  then  the  beautiful  road,  the  horses,  the  merry 
driver,  —  and  I  travelled  and  enjoyed  myself,  hardly 
thinking  of  what  awaited  me,  or  maybe  I  enjoyed  it  all 
so  much  because  I  knew  what  was  awaiting  me  and  I 
was  bidding  farewell  to  all  the  joys  of  life.  This  calm 
mood,  this  ability  to  suppress  my  feelings,  came  to  an 
end  with  the  carriage  drive. 

"  The  moment  I  entered  the  car,  something  quite  differ- 
ent began  for  me.  This  eight-hour  journey  in  the  car 
was  something  terrible,  —  I  shall  not  forget  it  all  my 
life.  I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  that,  seating  myself 
in  the  car,  I  vividly  presented  to  myself  my  arrival,  or 
because  the  railroad  acts  in  such  an  exciting  manner  upon 
people,  but  the  moment  I  sat  down  in  the  car  I  could 
not  control  my  imagination,  and  it  did  not  cease  painting 
for  me  with  the  greatest  clearness,  one  after  another, 
pictures  that  fanned  my  jealousy,  and  what  was  all  the 
time  going  on  there,  while  she  was  false  to  me.  I  burned 
with  indignation,  rage,  and  a  certain  special  feeling  of 
gloating  over  my  humihation,  as  I  contemplated  these 
pictures,  and  I  could  not  tear  myself  away  from  them, 
could  not  help  looking  at  them,  could  not  wipe  them 
out,  could  not  help  evoking  them.  More  than  that.  The 
more  I  contemplated  these  imaginary  pictures,  the  more 
I  believed  in  their  reality.  The  brightness  with  which 
these  pictures  arose  before  me  seemed  to  serve  as  a  proof 
that  that  which  I  imagined  was  real.  A  devil,  as  it  were 
against  my  will,  concocted  and  whispered  to  me  the  most 
terrible  combinations.     I  recalled  a  late  conversation  with 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  399 

a  "brother  of  Trukhach^vski,  and  I  with  a  kind  of  trans- 
port lacerated  ray  heart  with  this  conversation,  referring 
it  to  Trukhach^vski  and  my  wife. 

"  That  had  happened  long  ago,  but  I  recalled  it.  Tru- 
khach^vski's  brother,  I  remembered  once,  in  reply  to  a 
question  whether  he  frequented  certain  houses,  said  that  a 
decent  man  would  not  go  where  he  might  catch  a  disease, 
and  it  was  dirty  and  nasty  to  do  it,  as  long  as  one  could 
find  a  decent  woman.  And  so  he,  his  brother,  had  found 
my  wife.  '  It  is  true,  she  is  no  longer  in  her  first  youth ; 
she  has  lost  one  side  tooth,  and  there  is  a  certain  puffi- 
ness,'  I  thought  for  him,  '  but  what  is  to  be  done  ?  I 
must  make  use  of  what  I  find.  —  Yes,  he  is  condescend- 
ing to  her  in  making  her  his  mistress,'  I  said  to  myself. 
*  Besides,  there  is  no  danger  with  her  —  No,  it  is  impos- 
sible ! '  I  said  to  myself,  in  terror.  *  There  is  nothing 
of  the  kind,  nothing !  There  is  not  even  basis  for  sup- 
posing anything  of  the  kind.  Did  she  not  tell  me  that 
even  the  thought  of  my  being  jealous  of  him  was  humil- 
iating to  her  ?  Ah,  but  she  is  lying,  she  is  doing  nothing 
but  lying  ! '  I  called  out,  and  it  began  once  more  — 
There  were  but  two  passengers  in  our  car :  an  old  woman 
and  her  husband,  both  very  talkative,  but  they  left  at  a 
station,  and  I  remained  all  alone.  I  was  like  a  beast  in 
a  cage :  now  I  jumped  up  and  walked  over  to  the  win- 
dows ;  now  I  staggered  and  began  to  walk  as  though  to 
get  ahead  of  the  car ;  but  the  car  with  all  its  benches  and 
windows  kept  shaking  just  like  this  one  —  " 

Pozdnyshev  jumped  up,  took  a  few  steps,  and  again  sat 
down. 

"  Oh,  I  am  afraid,  I  am  afraid  of  the  railway  cars,  — 
terror  takes  possession  of  me  !  Yes,  they  are  terrible  ! "  he 
continued.  "  I  said  to  myself  that  I  would  think  of  some- 
thing else,  say  of  the  landlord  of  the  inn  where  I  drank 
the  tea.  And  so  before  my  mental  eye  arose  the  janitor 
with  a  long  beard  and  his  grandson,  a  child  as  old  as  my 


400  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

V^sya.  '  My  Yasya !  He  will  see  the  musician  kiss  his 
mother.  What  will  take  place  in  his  poor  soul  ?  What 
does  she  care  !  She  loves  — '  And  again  the  same  storm 
arose  in  me.  '  No,  no.  I  will  think  of  the  inspection  of 
the  hospital.  Yes,  how  the  patient  yesterday  complained 
of  the  doctor.  The  doctor  has  a  moustache  just  like 
Trukhach^vski's.  With  what  a  brazen  face  he  —  both  of 
them  —  deceived  me,  when  he  said  that  he  was  leaving.' 
And  again  it  began.  Everything  of  which  I  thought  was 
connected  with  him.  I  suffered  terribly.  My  chief  suf- 
fering was  in  the  ignorance,  the  doubts,  the  doubleness, 
the  want  of  knowledge  of.  whether  I  was  to  love  or  hate 
her.  The  suffering  was  a  strange  feeling :  a  hatred  of 
the  consciousness  of  my  humiliation  and  liis  victory,  and 
a  terrible  hatred  for  her. 

" '  I  cannot  make  an  end  of  myself  and  leave  her ;  she 
must  suffer  at  least  some,  in  order  that  she  may  under- 
stand what  I  have  gone  through,'  I  said  to  myself.  I 
went  out  at  every  station  to  divert  myself.  In  one  station 
I  saw  people  drinking  near  the  counter,  and  I  immedi- 
ately drank  some  brandy.  Near  me  was  standing  a  Jew, 
and  he  also  was  drinking.  He  began  to  talk,  and  I,  not 
to  be  left  alone  in  the  car,  went  with  him  into  a  dirty, 
smoke-tilled  car  of  the  tlurd  class,  the  floor  of  which  was 
covered  with  shells  of  pumpkin  seeds.  I  sat  down  at  his 
side,  and  he  kept  chatting  and  telling  some  kinds  of  anec- 
dotes. I  listened  to  him,  but  was  unable  to  understand 
what  he  was  saying  because  I  was  all  the  time  thinking 
about  myself.  He  noticed  it  and  began  to  demand  my 
attention ;  so  I  got  up  and  went  back  to  my  car. 

" '  I  must  consider,'  I  said  to  myself,  '  whether  that 
which  I  am  thinking  is  true,  and  whether  there  is  any 
cause  for  me  to  be  tormented  so.'  I  sat  down,  wishing 
quietly  to  reflect  over  it,  but  immediately,  instead  of 
the  quiet  reflection,  it  started  again  :  instead  of  meditation 
there  were  pictures  and  presentations.     '  How  often  have 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  401 

I  been  tormented  thus,'  I  said  to  myself  (I  recalled  for- 
mer similar  fits  of  jealousy)  'and  then  it  all  ended  in 
nothing.  It  may  be  thus  even  now,  and  I  am  sure  I 
shall  find  her  quietly  asleep ;  she  will  wake  up,  will  be 
glad  to  see  me,  and  from  her  words  and  looks  I  shall  feel 
that  nothing  has  happened,  and  that  all  this  is  nonsense. 
Oh,  how  good  it  would  be  ! '  — '  No,  this  has  happened  too 
often,  and  will  not  be  so  now,'  a  certain  voice  told  me, 
and  again  it  started.  That  is  where  the  punishment  was  ! 
Not  to  a  syphilitic  hospital  would  I  take  a  young  man  in 
order  to  cure  him  of  his  desire  for  woman,  but  into  my 
soul,  to  look  at  those  devils  that  were  tearing  it  to  pieces  ! 
AVhat  was  terrible  was  that  I  arrogated  to  myself  the  un- 
questioned, full  right  over  her  body,  as  though  it  were  my 
own  body,  and  at  the  same  time  felt  that  I  could  not  rule 
over  this  body,  that  it  was  not  mine,  and  that  she  could 
dispose  of  it  as  she  wished,  and  wished  to  dispose  of  it 
differently  from  what  I  wanted  her  to.  And  I  could  do 
nothing  to  her  or  to  him.  He,  like  Vanka,  the  steward 
of  the  fable,  will  sing  before  the  gibbet  a  song  of  having 
kissed  the  sugared  lips,  and  so  forth,  and  his  will  be  the 
victory.  Still  less  can  I  do  anything  with  her.  If  she 
did  not  do  it,  but  wished  to  do  it,  —  and  I  know  that 
she  does  want  to,  —  it  is  even  worse.  It  would  be  better 
if  she  did  do  it,  and  I  should  know,  —  there  would  be 
no  uncertainty.  I  could  not  tell  what  it  was  I  wanted. 
I  wanted  her  not  to  wish  for  that  which  she  could  not 
help  wishing  for.     This  was  complete  insanity  ! 


XXVI. 

"At  next  to  the  last  station,  after  the  conductor  had 
come  to  collect  tickets,  I  picked  up  my  things  and  went 
out  on  the  brake  platform,  and  the  consciousness  of  the 
near  solution  only  increased  my  agitation.  I  felt  cold, 
and  my  jaws  began  to  tremble  so  that  my  teeth  chattered. 
I  mechanically  left  the  depot  with  the  crowd,  took  a  cab, 
seated  myself  in  it,  and  drove  off.  I  rode,  looking  at  the 
few  pedestrians  and  the  janitors  and  the  shadows  cast  by 
the  lamps  and  by  my  vehicle,  now  in  front,  and  now  back 
of  me,  not  thinking  of  anything.  Having  ridden  about 
half  a  verst,  my  feet  grew  cold,  and  I  recalled  that  I  had 
taken  off  my  woollen  stockings  in  the  car  and  had  put 
them  into  the  carpet-bag.  '  Where  is  the  carpet-bag,  — 
here  ?  Yes,  it  is.  And  the  wicker  trunk  ? '  I  recalled 
that  I  had  entirely  forgotten  about  the  luggage,  but  find- 
ing that  I  had  a  receipt,  I  decided  that  it  was  not  worth 
while  to  go  back  for  it,  and  so  I  continued  on  my  way. 

"  No  matter  how  much  I  try  to  recall  now,  I  am 
absolutely  unable  to  remember  what  my  condition  at 
that  time  was :  I  know  nothing  of  what  I  thought  or 
wished.  I  only  remember  having  been  conscious  that 
something  terrible  and  very  important  for  my  life  was  in 
store  for  me.  I  do  not  know  whether  this  important 
thing  happened  to  me  because  I  thought  of  it,  or  because 
I  had  a  presentiment  of  it.  It  may  also  be  that  after 
what  happened  all  the  previous  moments  received  in  my 
recollection  a  sombre  shade.  I  drove  up  to  the  entrance. 
It  was  one  o'clock.  Several  cabmen  were  standing  near 
the  entrance,  expecting  passengers  from  the  lighted  win- 

402 


THE    KREUTZEE   SONATA  403 

dows  (the  windows  that  were  lighted  were  those  of  the 
parlour  aud  drawiug-room  of  my  apartment).  Without 
rendering  myself  any  account  of  why  there  was  a  light  in 
our  windows  so  late  at  night,  I,  in  the  same  mood  of 
expectation  of  something  terrible,  ascended  the  staircase 
and  rang  the  bell.  Egdr,  a  good,  careful,  and  most  stupid 
lackey,  opened  the  door.  The  first  thing  my  eyes  fell 
upon  was  an  overcoat  hanging  with  other  clothes  on  the 
rack  of  the  antechamber.  I  ought  to  have  been  surprised, 
but  I  was  not,  because  I  expected  it.  '  That's  it,'  I  said  to 
myself.  When  I  asked  Egdr  who  was  there  and  he 
named  Trukhachevski,  I  asked  whether  there  was  any- 
body else.  He  said,  '  Nobody,  sir.'  I  remember  how  he 
told  me  this  with  an  intonation  as  if  to  give  me  pleasure 
and  dispel  my  doubts  as  to  the  presence  of  anybody  else. 
'  Yes,  yes,'  I  seemed  to  be  saying  to  myself.  '  And  the 
children  ? '  — '  Thank  God,  they  are  well.  They  have  been 
asleep  for  quite  awhile,  sir.' 

"  I  could  not  draw  breath  nor  stop  my  jaws  from 
shaking.  '  So,  I  see,  it  is  not  as  I  had  thought :  formerly 
I  used  to  expect  a  misfortune,  but  everything  was  as  of 
old.  Now  everything  is  not  as  of  old ;  here  is  everything 
I  have  been  imagining,  —  everything  I  thought  I  only 
imagined  has  now  actually  happened.     Here  it  is  all  — ' 

"  I  came  very  near  sobbing  out,  but  the  devil  immedi- 
ately whispered  to  me :  '  You  weep  and  become  senti- 
mental, and  they  will  quietly  part  from  each  other,  there 
will  be  no  proofs,  and  you  will  all  your  hfe  be  in  doubt 
and  torment.'  Directly  my  sentimentality  disappeared, 
and  there  arose  a  strange  feeling  of  joy  because  now  my 
torment  will  come  to  an  end,  because  I  could  punish  her 
and  get  rid  of  her,  because  I  could  give  free  play  to  my 
rage.  I  did  give  free  play  to  my  rage,  —  I  became  a 
beast,  an  evil,  cunning  beast.  '  Don't,  don't,'  I  said  to 
Eg6r,  who  wanted  to  go  to  the  drawing-room.  *  Do  this : 
take  a  cab  at  once  and  go  to  the  station ;   here  is  the 


404  THE    KKEUTZER    SONATA 

receipt,  —  get  the  luggage.  Go  ! '  He  went  along  the 
corridor  for  his  overcoat.  Fearing  lest  he  might  scare 
them  up,  I  went  with  him  as  far  as  his  room  and  waited 
until  he  was  dressed. 

"  In  the  drawing-room,  heyond  another  room,  was  heard 
conversation  and  the  sound  of  knives  and  plates.  They 
were  eating  and  had  not  heard  the  bell.  '  If  only  it  may 
turn  out  I  am  wrong ! '  I  thought.  Egor  put  on  his 
Astrakhan  fur  overcoat  and  went  out.  I  let  him  out 
and  locked  the  door  after  him ;  I  felt  uneasy  when  I  felt 
that  I  was  left  alone,  and  that  I  must  act  at  once.  I  did 
not  yet  know  how.  I  only  knew  that  now  everything 
was  ended,  that  there  could  be  no  doubts  in  regard  to  her 
guilt,  and  that  I  would  immediately  punish  her  and  break 
all  my  relations  with  her. 

"  Before  this  time  I  wavered  and  said  to  myself, 
*  Maybe  this  is  not  true,  maybe  I  am  mistaken,'  but 
now  there  was  nothing  of  that.  Everything  was  irrev- 
ocably decided  upon.  Secretly  from  me,  all  alone  with 
him  in  the  -night !  This  is  a  complete  oblivion  of  every- 
thing !  Or  worse  still :  there  is  purposely  such  boldness 
and  impudence  in  the  crime  in  order  that  this  bold- 
ness may  serve  as  a  token  of  innocence.  Everything  is 
clear,  —  no  doubt  is  possible.  I  was  afraid  of  this  one 
thing  that  they  would  run  away  and  concoct  some  new 
deception,  thus  depriving  me  of  the  palpable  evidence  and 
possibility  of  proof ;  therefore,  in  order  to  catch  them  at 
once,  I  went  on  tiptoe  to  the  parlour,  where  they  were 
sitting,  not  through  the  drawing-room,  but  through  the 
corridor  and  the  cliildren's  rooms. 

"  In  the  first  room  the  boys  were  sleeping.  In  the 
second,  the  nurse  moved  and  was  about  to  awaken. 
Imagining  what  she  would  think  if  she  found  out  every- 
thing, such  a  pity  for  myself  overcame  me  at  the  thought 
that  I  was  unable  to  repress  tears  and,  in  order  not  to 
wake  the  children,  I  ran  on  tiptoe  into  the  corridor  and 


THE    K.REUTZER    SONATA  405 

into  my  cabinet,  where  I  flung  myself  down  on  the  divan 
and  burst  out  into  sobs. 

" '  I  am  an  honest  man,  I  am  the  son  of  my  parents,  I 
have  all  my  life  dreamt  of  the  happiness  of  domestic  life ; 
I  am  a  man  who  has  never  betrayed  her —  Here  are 
five  children,  and  she  embraces  a  musician  because  he 
has  red  lips ! 

" '  Xo,  she  is  not  a  human  being !  She  is  a  bitch,  an 
abominable  bitch  !  In  the  next  room  to  her  children,  whom 
she  has  been  pretending  to  love  all  her  life.  And  to 
write  to  me  what  she  did !  So  impudently  to  hang  about 
his  neck !  How  do  I  know  but  that  it  has  been  so  all  the 
time  ?  Maybe  the  lackeys  begot  all  the  children  whom  I 
regard  as  ray  own  ! 

"  '  I  should  have  arrived  on  the  morrow,  and  she,  in  her 
coiffure,  with  her  waist  and  her  indolent,  graceful  motions 
(I  saw  all  her  attractive,  hateful  face),  would  have  met 
me,  and  the  beast  of  jealousy  would  have  for  ever 
remained  in  my  heart  and  would  have  lacerated  it. 
What  will  the  nurse  think  ?  —  Egor  —  And  poor  Liza  ! 
She  understands  a  little  now.  And  that  impudence ! 
That  lie !  And  that  animal  sensuality,  which  I  know  so 
well ! '  I  said  to  myself. 

"  I  wanted  to  get  up,  but  I  could  not.  My  heart  was 
beating  so  much  that  I  could  not  stand  on  my  feet.  '  Yes, 
I  shall  die  of  apoplexy.  She  will  kill  me.  That  is  what 
she  wants.  She  wants  to  kill  me !  No,  that  would  be 
too  advantageous  for  her,  and  I  will  not  afford  her  that 
pleasure.  Here  I  am  sitting,  and  they  are  eating  and 
laughing  there,  and  —  Yes,  although  she  is  no  longer  in 
her  first  youth,  he  has  not  disdained  her :  she  is  not  bad- 
looking,  but,  chiefly,  she  is  safe  for  his  precious  health. 
Why  did  I  not  choke  her  then  ? '  I  said  to  myself,  recall- 
ing the  moment  when,  the  week  before,  I  drove  her  out 
of  the  cabinet  and  then  hurled  things  at  her.  I  vividly 
recalled  the  condition  in  which  I  then  was  ;  I  not  only 


\ 


406  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

recalled  it,  but  experienced  the  same  necessity  of  beat- 
ing and  destroying  which  I  experienced  then.  I 
remember  how  I  wanted  to  act  and  how  all  other 
considerations  than  those  which  were  necessary  for  action 
had  taken  flight  from  my  mind.  I  entered  into  that 
condition  of  the  beast  or  of  a  man  under  the  influence  of 
physical  excitement  in  time  of  danger,  when  a  man  acts 
precisely,  leisurely,  but,  at  the  same  time,  without  losing 
a  minute  and  with  one  definite  purpose  in  view. 

"The  first  thing  I  did  was  to  take  off  my  boots  and, 
remaining  in  my  socks,  to  walk  over  to  the  wall  above  the 
divan,  where  guns  and  daggers  were  hanging,  and  to  take 
down  a  sharp  Damascus  dagger  which  had  never  been 
used  and  which  was  very  sharp.  I  took  it  out  of  the 
scabbard.  The  scabbard,  I  remember,  I  threw  behind 
the  divan,  and  I  remember  saying  to  myself, '  I  must  find 
it  later,  or  else  it  will  be  lost.'  Then  I  took  off  my  over- 
coat, which  I  had  kept  on  all  the  time,  and,  stepping 
softly  in  my  socks,  I  went  there. 


xxvn. 

"Having  softly  approached  the  door,  I  suddenly 
opened  it.  I  remember  the  expression  of  their  faces.  I 
remember  that  expression,  because  it  afforded  me  a  pain- 
ful pleasure,  —  it  was  the  expression  of  terror.  That  was 
what  I  wanted.  I  shall  never  forget  that  expression  of 
desperate  terror  wdiich  during  the  first  second  had  ap- 
peared on  their  faces,  as  they  caught  sight  of  me.  He, 
I  think,  was  sitting  at  the  table,  but,  upon  seeing  or  hear- 
ing me,  he  jumped  to  his  feet  and  stood  up  with  his  back 
against  a  safe.  On  his  face  w^as  nothing  but  an  unmis- 
takable expression  of  terror.  On  her  face  there  was  also 
an  expression  of  terror,  but  at  the  same  time  there  was 
also  something  else.  If  '  there  had  been  nothing  but 
terror,  probably  that  which  took  place  would  not  have 
happened ;  but  in  the  expression  of  her  face  there  was  — 
at  least  it  so  appeared  to  me  during  this  first  moment 
—  aimoyance,  dissatisfaction  at  having  been  disturbed  in 
her  infatuation  and  happiness  with  him.  It  looked  as 
thouRh  all  she  needed  was  that  she  should  not  be  inter- 
fered  with  in  her  happiness.  Both  these  expressions 
hovered  but  an  instant  on  their  faces.  The  expression  of 
terror  on  his  face  soon  gave  way  to  a  questioning  expres- 
sion :  '  May  I  lie  or  not  ?  If  I  may,  I  must  begin.  If  not, 
there  will  happen  something  else.  What  will  it  be  ? '  He 
cast  an  interrogative  glance  at  her.  Upon  her  face  the 
expression  of  vexation  and  aggravation  gave  way,  as  I 
thought  when  she  looked  at  him,  to  anxiety  in  his  behalf. 

"  I  stopped  for  an  instant  at  the  door,  holding  the  dag- 
ger behind  my  back. 

407 


408  THE    KREUTZER   SONATA 

"  Just  then  he  smiled  and  said,  in  a  ridiculously  indif- 
ferent voice,  '  We  have  been  playing  together.' 

" '  I  did  not  expect  you  ! '  she  at  once  began,  submitting 
to  his  tone.  But  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  finished 
what  they  wanted  to  say :  the  same  fury,  of  which  I  had 
been  possessed  the  week  before,  overcame  me  now.  I 
again  experienced  that  necessity  of  destruction,  violence, 
and  transport  of  rage,  and  abandoned  myself  to  it.  They 
did  not  finish  their  sentences.  There  began  that  other 
thing,  of  which  he  was  afraid,  that  which  at  once  put  to 
nought  that  which  they  had  said.  I  rushed  against  her, 
still  concealing  the  dagger,  that  he  might  not  interfere 
with  my  thrusting  it  into  her  side,  underneath  the  breast. 
I  had  chosen  that  spot  from  the  very  start.  Just  as  1 
flew  against  her  he  saw  it,  and,  what  I  had  not  expected 
of  him,  seized  my  arm  and  exclaimed  :  '  Think  what  you 
are  doing  !     The  people  ! ' 

"  I  tore  my  arm  away  from  him  and  silently  rushed 
against  him.  His  eyes  met  mine ;  he  suddenly  grew  as 
pale  as  a  sheet,  up  to  his  very  lips ;  his  eyes  flashed  in  a 
peculiar  manner,  and,  what  again  I  had  not  expected,  he 
flung  himself  uuder  the  piano  and  out  through  the 
door.  I  rushed  after  him,  but  a  weight  hung  upon  my 
left  arm.  It  was  she.  I  tried  to  jerk  myself  away, 
but  she  clung  more  firmly  to  me  and  did  not  let  me  out 
of  her  grasp.  This  sudden  impediment,  the  weight,  and 
her  touch,  which  was  loathsome  to  me,  fanned  my  rage 
even  more,  I  felt  that  I  was  infuriated  and  that  I  must 
be  terrible,  and  I  was  glad  of  it.  I  swung  my  left  arm 
with  all  my  might,  and  my  elbow  struck  her  face.  She 
cried  out  and  let  my  arm  drop.  I  wanted  to  run  after 
him,  but  recalled  that  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  run 
after  my  wife's  lover  in  my  socks,  and  I  did  not  want 
to  be  ridiculous,  1  wanted  to  be  terrible.  In  spite  of  the 
terrible  fury  which  I  was  in,  I  was  all  the  time  conscious 
of  the  impression  I  was  producing  upon  others,  and  I  was 


THE    KREUTZEK    SONATA  409 

partly  guided  by  this  very  impression,  I  turned  to  her. 
She  fell  down  on  a  sofa  and,  putting  her  hand  to  her  black- 
ened eyes,  looked  at  me.  In  her  face  there  was  an  expres- 
sion of  terror  and  hatred  for  me,  the  enemy,  such  as  is 
expressed  in  a  rat  when  the  trap  is  opened,  in  which  it 
has  been  caught.  At  least,  I  did  not  see  anything  else 
in  her  but  this  expression  of  terror  and  hatred  for  me. 
It  was  the  same  terror  and  hatred  for  me  which  the  love 
for  the  other  man  must  have  provoked.  I  still  might 
have  abstained  from  doing  what  I  did  if  she  had  kept 
quiet.  But  she  suddenly  began  to  speak  and  to  seize  the 
hand  in  which  I  held  the  dagger, 

" '  Come  to  your  senses  !  What  are  you  doing  ?  What 
is  the  matter  with  you  ?  There  is  nothing,  nothing, 
I  swear ! ' 

"  I  should'  have  hesitated,  but  these  last  words,  from 
which  I  concluded  the  opposite,  that  is,  that  there  was 
everything,  demanded  an  answer;  And  the  answer  had 
to  correspond  to  the  mood  to  which  I  had  brought  myself 
and  which  was  going  crescendo,  and  continued  to  become 
more  intense.     Fury,  too,  has  its  laws. 

"  '  Don't  lie,  you  wretch  ! '  I  cried,  and  caught  her  arm 
with  my  left  hand,  but  she  tore  herself  away.  Then 
I,  without  dropping  the  dagger,  caught  her  by  the  throat 
with  my  left  hand,  threw  her  down  on  her  back,  and 
began  to  choke  her.  How  rough  her  neck  was !  She 
clasped  my  hands  with  both  of  hers,  pulling  them  away 
from  her  throat.  I  seemed  to  have  waited  just  for  that : 
with  all  my  might  I  thrust  the  dagger  into  her  left  side, 
below  the  ribs. 

"When  people  say  that  in  a  fit  of  fury  they  do  not 
remember  what  they  are  doing,  they  are  telling  an  un- 
truth. I  remembered  everything,  nor  did  I  stop  remem- 
bering for  a  single  second.  The  more  I  raised  witliin  me 
the  steam  of  my  fury,  the  more  clearly  did  the  hght  of 
consciousness  burn  within  me,  so  that  I  could  not  help 


410  THE   KREUTZER   SONATA 

seeing  all  T  was  doing.  I  knew  every  second  what  I  was 
doing.  I  cannot  say  that  I  knew  in  advance  what  I  was 
going  to  do,  but  at  any  second  when  I  was  doing  some- 
thing, —  I  almost  think  even  a  little  before  it,  —  I  knew 
what  I  was  doing,  as  though  having  a  chance  of  regretting 
my  action,  and  of  saying  that  I  might  have  stopped  it. 
I  knew  that  I  struck  her  below  the  ribs,  and  that  the 
dagger  would  enter.  At  the  very  moment  when  I  was 
doing  it  I  knew  that  I  was  doing  something  terrible, 
something  which  I  had  never  done  before,  and  which 
would  have  terrible  consequences.  But  this  conscious- 
ness flashed  like  lightning,  and  the  deed  followed  imme- 
diately after  the  consciousness.  The  deed  was  perceived 
by  me  with  unusual  clearness.  I  heard,  and  I  remembei-, 
the  momentary  resistance  of  the  corset  and  of  something 
else,  and  then  the  sinking  of  the  dagger  in  something  soft. 
She  caught  the  dagger  with  her  hands  and  only  cut  them, 
without  keeping  it  back. 

"  I  for  a  long  time  thought  of  this  moment  later,  in 
prison,  after  the  moral  transformation  had  taken  place 
in  me ;  I  recalled  what  I  might  have  done,  and  I  re- 
flected. I  remember  how  for  an  instant,  only  for  an 
instant,  the  deed  was  preceded  by  the  terrible  conscious- 
ness that  I  was  killing  and  already  had  killed  a  woman, 
a  helpless  woman,  my  wife !  I  remember  the  horror  of 
that  consciousness,  and  so  I  conclude  and  even  dimly 
remember  that,  having  pierced  her  with  a  dagger,  I  imme- 
diately pulled  it  out,  wishing  to  mend  that  which  I  had 
done,  and  to  stop  it.  I  stood  a  moment  motionless,  wait- 
ing to  see  what  would  happen  and  whether  it  could  not 
be  mended. 

"  She  jumped  to  her  feet  and  cried,  '  Nurse,  he  has 
killed  me  ! ' 

"  The  nurse,  who  had  heard  the  noise,  was  standing  at 
the  door.  I  was  still  standing,  waiting,  and  not  believing 
myself.    Just  then  the  blood  burst  from  under  her  corset. 


THE    KREUTZER   SONATA  411 

Only  then  did  I  understand  that  it  could  not  be  mended, 
and  I  immediately  concluded  that  it  was  not  necessary 
to  mend  it,  that  it  was  precisely  what  I  wanted  and  what 
I  had  to  do.  I  waited  until  she  fell  down,  and  the  nurse 
with  a  cry  of  '  Help ! '  ran  up  to  her,  and  then  only  threw 
down  the  dagger  and  went  out  of  the  room. 

" '  I  must  not  be  agitated ;  I  must  know  what  I  am 
doing,'  I  said  to  myself,  without  looking  at  her  or  at  the 
nurse.  The  nurse  was  crying  and  calling  the  maid.  I 
went  through  the  corridor  and,  having  sent  in  the  maid, 
went  back  to  my  cabinet.  '  What  must  I  do  now  ? ' 
I  asked  myself,  and  immediately  saw  what.  Upon  enter- 
ing the  cabinet,  I  went  directly  up  to  the  wall,  took  down 
a  revolver  from  it,  and  examined  it :  it  was  loaded,  — 
and  I  put  it  down  on  the  table.  Then  I  took  the  scab- 
bard out  from  behind  the  divan  and  sat  down  on  the 
divau. 

"I  sat  thus  for  a  long  time.  I  thought  of  nothing, 
recalled  nothing.  I  heard  them  bustHug  outside.  I 
heard  somebody  arrive,  and  then  again  somebody.  Then 
I  heard  and  saw  Egor  come  in  and  bring  my  wicker  trunk 
into  the  cabinet.     As  though  anybody  wanted  it ! 

" '  Have  you  heard  what  has  happened  ? '  I  asked  him. 
•  Tell  the  janitor  to  inform  the  police.'  He  said  nothing 
and  went  out.  I  got  up,  locked  the  door,  took  out  the 
cigarettes  and  matches,  and  began  to  smoke. 

"  I  had  not  finished  one  cigarette  when  sleep  over- 
powered me.  I  must  have  slept  about  two  hours.  I 
remember  I  dreamt  that  we  were  on  good  terms,  that  we 
had  had  a  quarrel  and  had  made  up  again,  that  there 
was  something  in  the  way,  but  we  were  friends.  I  was 
awakened  by  a  rap  at  the  door.  '  This  is  the  pohce,'  I 
thought,  as  I  awoke.  '  I  think  I  killed  her.  And  maybe 
it  is  she,  and  there  has  been  nothing.'  There  was  another 
rap  at  the  door.  I  did  not  answer  and  I  decided  the 
question,  '  Has  it  happened,  or  not  ?     Yes,  it  has.'     I  re- 


412  THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

membered  the  resistance  of  the  corset  and  the  sinking  of 
the  dagger,  and  a  chill  ran  down  my  back.  '  Yes,  it  has. 
And  now  I  must  do  away  with  myself,'  I  said  to  myself. 
I  said  this,  and  I  knew  that  I  would  not  kill  myself. 
Still,  I  arose  and  took  the  revolver  into  my  hands.  But, 
strange  to  say,  although  I  had  often  been  near  commit- 
ting suicide,  although  even  on  that  day  this  had  seemed 
to  me  an  easy  thing  to  do,  as  I  was  riding  on  the  railway, 
easy  because  I  thought  I  would  startle  her  with  it, — 
now  I  was  not  only  unable  to  do  so,  but  even  to  think 
of  it.  '  Why  do  I  want  to  do  it  ? '  I  asked  myself,  and 
there  was  no  answer.  They  again  knocked  at  the  door. 
'  Yes,  first  I  must  find  out  who  is  knocking.  I  shall  have 
time  to  do  this.'  I  put  down  the  revolver  and  covered  it 
with  a  newspaper.  I  went  up  to  the  door  and  opened 
the  latch.  It  was  my  wife's  sister,  a  kind,  stupid  widow. 
'  Vasya,  what  is  this  ? '  she  said,  and  the  ever  ready  tears 
burst  forth. 

"  '  What  do  you  want  ? '  I  asked,  roughly.  I  saw  that 
there  was  no  reason  whatever  for  me  to  be  rough  with 
her,  but  I  could  not  think  of  any  other  tone  of  voice. 
'  Vasya,  she  is  dying  !     Ivan  Zakharych  said  so.' 

"  Ivan  Zakharych  was  her  doctor,  her  adviser.  '  Is  he 
here  ? '  I  asked,  and  all  my  rage  against  her  again  rose 
in  me.  '  Well  what  of  it  ? '  — '  Vasya,  go  to  her.  Ah, 
how  terrible  it  is ! '  she  said.  '  Shall  I  go  to  her  ? '  I 
asked  myself,  and  I  immediately  answered  myself  that 
I  must,  that,  no  doubt,  it  is  always  that  way,  —  that 
when  a  man  kills  his  wife  he  must  go  to  see  her.  '  If  that 
is  the  way  it  is  done,  I  must  go,'  I  said  to  myself.  '  Well, 
if  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  shoot  myself,  I  shall  have 
time  to  do  so,'  I  thought  in  regard  to  my  intention  of  kill- 
ing myself,  and  followed  her.  '  Now  there  will  be  phrases 
and  grimaces,  but  I  will  not  submit  to  them.'  '  Wait,'  I 
said  to  her  sister,  '  it  is  foolish  to  go  without  my  boots. 
Let  me  at  least  put  on  my  slippers.' 


XXVIIL 

«  A  STRANGE  thing  happened  !  When  I  left  my  room 
and  walked  through  the  familiar  rooms,  I  again  was 
stirred  by  the  hope  that  nothing  had  happened,  but  the 
smell  of  the  physician's  nasty  things,  of  the  iodoform  and 
carbolic  acid,  startled  me.  Yes,  it  has  happened.  Walk- 
ing along  the  corridor,  past  the  children's  room,  I  saw 
Liza.  She  looked  at  me  with  frightened  eyes.  I  thought 
that  all  five  of  the  children  were  there,  looking  at  me.  I 
went  up  to  the  door,  and  the  chambermaid  opened  it  for 
me  from  within  and  went  out.  The  first  thing  that  my 
eyes  fell  upon  was  her  light  gray  dress  upon  the  chair,  all 
black  with  gore.  On  our  double  bed  —  on  my  bed  (it 
was  easier  to  get  at  it)  —  she  lay  with  uplifted  knees. 
She  lay  in  a  very  inclined  position,  on  pillows,  with  her 
bodice  unbuttoned.  There  was  somethiug  placed  over  the 
wound.  The  room  was  filled  with  the  heavy  odour  of 
iodoform.  Nothing  impressed  me  so  much  as  her  swollen 
face,  with  part  of  the  nose  and  the  lower  part  of  the  eyes 
blue  and  discoloured.  This  was  the  result  of  the  blow 
with  my  elbow,  when  she  tried  to  keep  me  back.  There 
was  no  beauty  whatever,  and  I  saw  only  something  abomi- 
nable in  her.  1  stopped  at  the  threshold.  '  Go  up,  go  up 
to  her,'  her  sister  said  to  me.  '  No  doubt  she  wants  to 
confess,'  I  thought,  trying  to  be  magnauimous.  I  walked 
over  to  her.  She  with  difficulty  raised  her  eyes,  one  of 
which  was  badly  bruised,  and  she  muttered  with  difficulty 
and  hesitatingly  : 

"  *  You  have  accomplished  it,  you  have  killed  me  — ' 

413 


414  THE    KREUTZEK    SONATA 

and  in  her  face,  through  the  physical  suffering  and  the 
nearness  of  death,  there  was  expressed  the  old,  familiar, 
cold,  animal  hatred.  '  The  children  —  however  —  I  will 
not  give  —  to  you  —    She  '  (her  sister)  '  will  take  them  —  ' 

"  But  that  which  to  me  was  the  most  important  thing, 
her  guilt,  she  did  not  consider  worth  while  mentioning,  so 
it  seemed. 

" '  Yes,  enjoy  your  deed,'  she  said,  looking  at  the 
door,  and  she  began  to  sob.  At  the  door  stood  her 
sister  with  the  children.  '  Yes,  this  is  what  you  have 
done.' 

"  I  looked  at  the  children,  at  her  bruised,  discoloured 
face,  and  for  the  first  time  I  forgot  myself,  my  rights,  my 
pride,  —  for  the  first  time  I  saw  the  human  being  in  her. 
And  so  insignificant  seemed  everything  to  me  which  had 
offended  me,  all  my  jealousy,  and  so  significant  what  I 
had  done,  that  I  wanted  to  fall  with  my  face  to  her  hand 
and  say,  '  Forgive  me ! '  but  I  did  not  dare  to. 

"  She  was  silent  and  covered  her  eyes,  evidently  not 
having  the  strength  to  speak  any  more.  Then  her 
maimed  face  quivered  and  became  wrinkled.  She  feebly 
pushed  me  away. 

" '  Why  has  all  this  been,  why  ? ' 

" '  Forgive  me  ! '  I  said. 

" '  Forgive  you  ?  It  is  all  nonsense  !  If  only  I  could 
live ! '  she  cried,  and,  raising  herself  a  little,  her  feverishly 
shining  eyes  were  directed  toward  me.  '  Yes,  you  have 
got  what  you  wanted  !  —  I  hate  you  !  —  Oh,  oh ! '  she 
called  out,  evidently  already  in  delirium,  as  though  fright- 
ened at  something. 

" '  Shoot !  I  am  not  afraid  !  —  Kill  everybody  !  — 
He  got  away  !  —     Away  !  — ' 

"  Her  delirium  lasted  the  rest  of  the  time.  She  did 
not  recognize  anybody.  She  died  that  very  day,  at  noon. 
Before  that  time,  at  eight  o'clock,  I  was  taken  to  the 
police  station,  and  then  to  prison.     While  staying  theiQ 


THE    KREUTZER    SONATA  415 

eleven  months  and  waiting  for  the  trial,  1  thought  about 
myself  and  my  past,  and  1  understood  it.  I  began  to 
understand  it  on  the  third  day.  On  the  third  day  they 
took  me  back  there  —  " 

He  wanted  to  say  something,  but  stopped,  being  unable 
to  keep  back  his  sobs.  Having  collected  himself,  he 
continued : 

"  I  began  to  understand  only  when  she  was  in  her 
grave  —  " 

He  sobbed,  but  immediately  continued  in  a  hurry  : 

"  Only  when  I  saw  her  dead  face  I  understood  all  I 
had  done.  I  understood  that  it  was  I  who  had  killed 
her ;  that  through  me  she,  who  had  been  alive,  moving, 
warm,  had  become  immovable,  waxlike,  cold ;  and  that 
this  could  never,  nowhere,  in  no  way,  be  mended.  He 
who  has  not  passed  through  it  cannot  comprehend  it. 
Ugh !  Ugh !  Ugh ! "  he  cried  several  times  and  grew 
silent. 

We  sat  for  a  long  time  in  silence.  He  sobbed  and 
trembled,  sitting  silently  in  front  of  me.  His  face  grew 
thin  and  drawn  and  his  mouth  was  stretched  out  to  its 
full  width. 

"  Yes,"  he  suddenly  exclaimed,  "  if  I  had  known  then 
what  I  know  now,  things  would  have  been  different.  I 
would  not  have  married  her  for  anything  —  I  would  not 
have  married  at  all." 

Again  we  sat  for  a  long  time  in  silence. 

"  AVell,  forgive  me  —  "  He  turned  away  from  me,  lay 
down  on  the  bench,  and  covered  himself  with  his  plaid. 
At  the  station  where  I  had  to  get  off,  —  it  was  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  —  I  went  up  to  him,  to  bid  him 
good-bye.  I  did  not  know  whether  he  was  asleep  or  only 
pretended  to  be,  but  he  did  not  stir.  I  touched  him  with 
my  hand.  He  uncovered  himself,  and  it  was  evident  that 
he  was  not  sleeping. 

"Good-bye,"  1  said,  offering  him  my  hand.     He  gave 


416  THE    KREUTZEK    SONATA 

me  his  and  barely  smiled  such  a  pitiable  smile  that  I  felt 
like  weeping. 

"  Yes,  forgive  me,"  he  repeated  the  word  with  which  he 
had  concluded  his  story. 


EPILOGUE    TO     THE    KREUT- 
ZER    SONATA 

1890 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUT- 
ZER    SONATA 


I  HAVE  received  many  letters  from  strangers  asking  me 
to  explain  in  simple  and  clear  words  what  I  think  of  the 
subject  of  the  story  which  I  wrote  under  the  title  of 
the  '•'  Kreutzer  Sonata."  I  shall  try  to  do  so,  that  is,  in 
a  few  words  to  express,  so  far  as  possible,  the  essence  of 
what  I  had  intended  to  convey  by  my  story,  and  of  the 
conclusions  at  which  one  may  arrive  from  it. 

I  wanted  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  in  our  society 
there  has  formed  itself  a  firm  conviction,  common  to  all 
classes  and  supported  by  the  false  science,  that  sexual 
intercourse  is  necessary  for  health,  and  that,  since  marriage 
is  not  always  possible,  sexual  intercourse  outside  of  matri- 
mony, which  does  not  put  men  under  any  other  obligations 
than  that  of  monetary  payment,  is  quite  natural  and 
worthy  of  emulation.  This  conviction  has  become  so 
general  and  deep-rooted  that  parents,  by  the  advice  of 
doctors,  arrange  debauchery  for  their  children ;  govern- 
ments, whose  only  meaning  consists  in  the  care  for  the 
moral  well-being  of  its  citizens,  establish  debauchery, 
that  is,  regulate  a  whole  class  of  women,  who  are  to  perish 
bodily  and  morally,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  imaginary 
needs  of  men,  while  unmarried  men  abandon  themselves 
to  this  debauchery  with  the  calmest  conscience. 

And  so  I  wanted  to  say  that  this  is  not  good,  because 
it  is  not  right  that  for  the  sake  of  the  health  of  one  class 
of  people  it  should  be  necessary  to  ruin  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  another  class,  just  as  it  is  not  right  that  for  the 

419 


420       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

sake  of  the  health  of  one  class  of  people  it  should  be 
necessary  to  drink  the  blood  of  others. 

The  natural  conclusion  from  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is 
that  it  is  not  good  to  submit  to  this  delusion  and  decep- 
tion. And,  in  order  not  to  submit,  it  is  necessary,  in  the 
first  place,  not  to  believe  in  this  immoral  doctrine,  no 
matter  by  what  imaginary  science  it  may  be  supported, 
and,  in  the  second,  to  understand  that  such  sexual  inter- 
course, where  people  free  themselves  from  its  possible 
consequences,  from  children,  or  shift  the  v/hole  burden  of 
these  consequences  to  the  woman,  or  prevent  the  possi- 
bility of  childbirth,  —  that  such  sexual  intercourse  is  a 
transgression  of  the  simplest  requirement  of  morality,  that 
it  is  base,  and  that,  therefore,  unmarried  men,  who  do  not 
wish  to  live  basely,  must  not  do  it. 

But,  in  order  to  be  able  to  abstain,  they  must,  in 
addition,  lead  a  natural  life,  not  drink,  not  stuff  them- 
selves, not  eat  meat,  and  not  avoid  labour  (I  do  not  mean 
gymnastics,  nor  play,  but  fatiguing  labour);  they  must 
not  permit  themselves  to  think  of  the  possibihty  of  inter- 
course with  strange  women,  just  as  all  men  exclude  the 
possibility  of  intercourse  between  themselves  and  their 
mothers,  sisters,  relatives,  and  the  wives  of  their  friends. 

Any  man  may  find  a  hundred  proofs  about  him  that 
continence  is  possible  and  less  dangerous  and  injurious  to 
him  than  non-continence. 

So  much  in  the  first  place. 

Secondly,  that  in  our  society,  on  account  of  the  current 
view  in  regard  to  carnal  love  as  not  only  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  health  and  as  a  pleasure,  but  also  as  a  poetical, 
exalted  good  of  life,  marital  infidelity  has  become  in  all 
strata  of  society  (especially  among  the  peasants,  thanks 
to  militarism)  a  most  common  phenomenon. 

I  assume  that  this  is  not  good.  The  conclusion  which 
springs  from  it  is  that  one  ought  not  to  do  it. 

But,  in  order  not  to  do  it,  it  is  necessary  for  the  view 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       421 

in  regard  to  carnal  love  to  change.  Men  and  women 
ought  to  be  educated  in  then-  homes  and  by  public  opinion 
to  look,  before  and  after  marriage,  on  infatuation  and  the 
carnal  love  connected  with  it,  not  as  upon  a  poetical  and 
exalted  condition,  such  as  it  is  now  considered  to  be,  but  as 
upon  an  animal  condition,  degrading  to  man ;  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  violation  of  a  promise  of  fidelity,  given  at 
marriage,  should  be  punished  by  public  opinion  certainly 
in  no  lesser  degree  than  are  punished  the  violations  of 
monetary  obligations  and  mercantile  frauds,  and  that  it 
should  not  be  extolled,  as  it  is  now,  in  novels,  poetry, 
songs,  operas,  etc. 

So  much  in  the  second  place. 

TJiirdly,  that  in  our  society,  again  on  account  of  the 
false  meaning  which  is  ascribed  to  carnal  love,  the  pro- 
creation of  children  has  lost  its  purpose,  and,  instead  of 
being  the  aim  and  justification  of  marital  relations,  has 
become  a  liindrauce  in  the  pleasant  continuation  of 
amatory  relations ;  that,  therefore,  outside  of  wedlock  and 
in  wedlock,  there  has  begun  to  spread,  at  the  advice  of 
the  servants  of  the  medical  science,  the  use  of  means 
depriving  women  of  the  possibility  of  childbirth,  or  there 
has  arisen  a  custom,  a  habit  (that  which  had  not  been 
before  and  even  now  is  not  found  in  patriarchal  peas- 
ant families)  of  continuing  the  conjugal  relations  during 
pregnancy  and  nursing.  I  assume  that  this  is  not 
good. 

It  is  not  good  to  use  means  preventive  of  childbirth, 
in  the  first  place,  because  people  are  thus  relieved  of 
cares  and  labours  in  regard  to  children,  who  serve  as  a 
redemption  of  carnal  love,  and,  in  the  second,  because  it 
comes  very  near  to  the  act  which  is  most  repulsive  to 
a  human  conscience,  to  murder.  Nor  is  non-continence 
during  pregnancy  and  nursing  good,  because  it  is 
destructive  of  the  physical,. and  still  more  of  the  mental, 
powers  of   woman.     The  conclusion  which  springs  from 


422       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

this  is  that  it  is  not  good  to  do  it.  But,  in  order  not  to 
do  it,  it  must  be  understood  that  continence,  which  forms 
a  necessary  condition  of  human  dignity  in  the  single  state, 
is  still  more  binding  in  marriage. 

So  much  in  the  third  place. 

Fourthly,  that  in  our  society,  where  children  appear  as 
a  hindrance  to  enjoyment,  or  as  an  unfortunate  accident, 
or  as  a  pecuhar  kind  of  enjoyment,  when  there  are  borne 
a  predetermined  number  of  them,  these  children  are 
brought  up,  not  in  conformity  with  the  problems  of 
human  existence,  with  which  they  will  be  confronted  as 
sensible  and  loving  beings,  but  only  in  conformity  with 
those  pleasures  which  they  may  afford  their  parents.  In 
consequence  of  this,  the  children  of  human  beings  are 
brought  up  like  the  young  of  animals,  so  that  the  chief 
problem  of  the  parents  does  not  consist  in  preparing  them 
for  an  activity  which  would  be  worthy  of  man,  but  (in 
which  view  the  parents  are  supported  by  the  false  science 
called  medicine)  in  feeding  them  as  well  as  possible,  in 
increasing  their  stature,  in  making  them  clean,  white, 
beautiful  (if  this  is  not  done  in  the  lower  classes,  the 
fault  is  that  of  circumstances,  for  the  view  there  held  is 
the  same).  In  these  pampered  children,  as  in  all  overfed 
animals,  there  is  early  developed  an  unnatural  and  in- 
superable sensuality,  which  is  the  cause  of  terrible  suffering 
for  these  children  in  their  youtli.  The  attire,  the  read- 
ing, the  shows,  the  music,  the  dances,  the  sweet  food, 
the  whole  circumstance  of  hfe,  from  the  pictures  on  the 
boxes  to  the  novels,  stories,  and  poems,  —  everything  still 
more  fans  this  sensuality,  and  in  consequence  of  this,  the 
most  terrible  sexual  vices  and  diseases  become  the  usual 
conditions  of  the  bringing  up  of  children  of  both  sexes, 
and  frequently  remain  so  through  manhood. 

I  assume  that  this  is  not  good.  The  conclusion  which 
may  be  drawn  from  it  is  that  we  must  stop  bringing  up 
the  children  of  men  like  the  young  of  animals,  and  that 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       423 

other  aims  must  be  kept  in  view  in  the  bringing  up  of 
children  besides  a  beautiful,  well-kept  body. 

So  much  in  the  fourth  place. 

Fifthly,  that  in  our  society  infatuation  between  a  young 
man  and  a  young  woman,  which  has,  after  all,  carnal  love 
at  its  base,  has  been  exalted  into  the  highest  poetical  aim 
of  human  tendencies,  to  which  all  the  art  and  poetry  of 
our  society  bear  witness.  The  best  part  of  young  people's 
lives  are  passed,  by  men,  in  discovering  and  taking  posses- 
sion of  the  best  objects  of  love  in  the  form  of  love-affairs 
or  of  marriage,  and  by  women  and  girls,  in  alluring  and 
drawing  men  into  love-affairs  or  mamage. 

Thus  the  best  powers  of  people  are  wasted  not  only  on 
unproductive,  but  even  on  dangerous,  work.  From  this 
originates  the  greater  part  of  the  senseless  luxury  of  our 
life ;  from  this  comes  the  indolence  of  men  and  the  shame- 
lessness  of  women,  who  do  not  disdain  the  fashions  which 
are  borrowed  from  notoriously  debauched  women,  and 
which  lay  bare  and  accentuate  the  parts  of  the  body  that 
provoke  sensuality. 

I  assume  that  this  is  not  good. 

It  is  not  good  because  the  attainment  of  the  aim  of 
being  united  in  wedlock  or  of  being  outside  of  wedlock 
with  the  object  of  love,  however  nmch  extolled  by  poetry 
it  may  be,  is  unworthy  of  man,  just  as  the  aim  of  obtain- 
ing sweet  and  superabundant  food,  which  presents  itself 
to  many  as  the  highest  good,  is  unworthy  of  man. 

The  conclusion  to  which  we  may  arrive  from  this  is 
that  we  must  cease  thinking  that  carnal  love  is  something 
peculiarly  exalted ;  we  must  come  to  understand  that  the 
aim  which  is  worthy  of  man  is  to  serve  humanity,  his 
country,  science,  or  art  (let  alone  serving  God),  whatever 
it  may  be,  as  long  as  it  is  worthy  of  man,  and  that  this 
aim  is  not  attained  through  a  union  with  the  object  of 
love  in  wedlock  or  outside  of  wedlock,  but  that,  on  the 
contrary,  infatuation  and  union  with  the  object  of  love 


424       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

(however  much  the  opposite  may  be  attempted  to  be 
proved  in  poetry  aud  prose)  never  makes  the  attaiument 
of  the  aim  which  is  w^orthy  of  man  any  easier,  but  always 
impedes  it. 

So  much  in  the  fifth  place. 

These  are  the  essentials  which  I  wished  to  express,  and 
which,  I  think,  I  have  expressed  in  my  story.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  there  might  be  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
how  the  evil  to  which  these  propositions  point  may  be 
mended,  but  that  it  was  impossible  not  to  admit  their 
truth.  It  seemed  to  me  that  it  was  not  possible  to  deny 
the  truth  of  these  propositions,  in  the  first  place,  be- 
cause they  are  entirely  in  agreement  with  the  progress 
of  humanity,  which  has  always  marched  from  looseness  of 
morals  to  an  ever  increasing  chastity,  and  with  the  moral 
consciousness  of  society,  with  our  conscience,  which  always 
condemns  looseness  of  morals  and  values  chastity ;  and,' 
in  the  second  place,  because  these  propositions  are  the 
inevitable  deductions  from  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel, 
which  we  profess,  or,  at  least,  even  though  it  be  only 
unconsciously,  assume  as  the  basis  for  our  ideas  of 
morality. 

But  it  has  turned  out  quite  differently. 

Nobody,  it  is  true,  directly  disputes  the  proposition  that 
debauchery  should  not  be  practised,  either  before  or  after 
marriage,  that  it  is  wrong  artificially  to  destroy  childbirth, 
that  children  are  not  to  be  made  playthings,  and  that 
amatory  union  ought  not  to  be  placed  higher  than  any- 
thing else,  —  in  short,  nobody  denies  that  chastity  is 
better  than  looseness  of  morals.  But  they  say  :  "  If  the 
single  state  is  better  than  wedlock,  then  people  ought 
evidently  to  do  that  which  is  better.  But,  if  people  do 
that,  then  the  human  race  will  come  to  an  end,  and 
therefore  the  destruction  of  the  human  race  cannot  be  its 
ideal."  Yet,  not  to  mention  the  fact  that  the  destruction 
of  the  human  race  is  not  a  new  conception  for  the  people 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       425 

of  this  world,  being  a  dogma  of  faith  with  the  religious 
people  and  for  the  scientific  men  an  inevitable  deduction 
from  the  observations  in  regard  to  the  sun's  congealment, 
—  there  is  in  this  expression  a  great,  wide-spread,  and  old 
misunderstanding.  They  say  :  "  If  people  will  reach  the 
ideal  of  complete  chastity,  they  will  be  destroyed,  and 
therefore  the  ideal  is  wrong."  But  those  who  say  so 
purposely  or  unwittingly  mix  up  two  different  things, — 
a  precept  and  an  ideal. 

Chastity  is  not  a  rule  or  a  precept,  but  an  ideal,  or, 
more  correctly,  one  of  its  conditions.  An  ideal  is  only 
then  an  ideal  when  its  reaHzation  is  possible  in  the  idea 
only,  in  thought,  when  it  presents  itself  as  attainable  only 
at  infinity,  and  when,  therefore,  the  approach  to  it  is 
infinite.  If  an  ideal  were  not  only  attainable,  but  we 
could  imagine  its  reahzation,  it  would  cease  to  be  an 
ideal.  Such  is  Christ's  ideal,  the  estabhshment  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  upon  earth,  —  an  ideal  which  had  been 
foretold  even  by  the  prophets  when  they  said  that  the 
time  would  come  when  the  people  would  be  instructed 
by  God,  when  the  swords  would  be  forged  into  plough- 
shares and  the  spears  into  sickles,  when  the  lion  would 
lie  with  the  lamb,  when  all  the  creatures  would  be  united 
in  love.  The  whole  meaning  of  human  life  consists  in  a 
motion  toward  this  ideal,  and  therefore  the  striving  after 
the  Christian  ideal,  in  all  its  entirety,  and  after  chastity, 
as  one  of  the  conditions  of  this  ideal,  not  only  does  not 
exclude  the  possibility  of  life,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the 
absence  of  this  Christian  ideal  would  destroy  all  move- 
ment forward  and,  consequently,  all  possibility  of  life. 

The  reflection  that  the  human  race  would  come  to  an 
end  if  people  should  with  all  their  power  tend  toward 
chastity  resembles  that  other  reflection  which  might  be 
made  (and  it  is  made),  that  the  human  race  will  perish  if 
people,  instead  of  struggling  for  existence,  should  with  all 
their  power  tend  to  the  reahzation  of  love  for  their  neigh- 


426       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

bour,  for  their  enemies,  for  all  liviug  beings.  Such  reflec- 
tions spring  from  the  inability  to  distinguish  between  two 
rules  of  moral  guidance. 

Just  as  there  are  two  ways  for  indicating  the  road  to  a 
traveller,  even  thus  there  are  two  ways  for  moral  guid- 
ance in  the  case  of  a  man  who  is  seeking  the  truth.  One 
way  consists  in  indicating  to  the  man  the  objects  which 
he  will  come  across,  and  then  he  is  guided  by  these 
objects. 

The  other  way  consists  in  giving  the  man  the  direction 
by  the  compass,  which  he  is  carrying  with  him,  and 
on  which  he  observes  the  one  immutable  direction,  and, 
consequently,  every  deflection  from  it. 

The  first  way  of  moral  guidance  is  the  way  of  external 
definitions,  of  rules :  man  is  given  definite  tokens  of  acts 
which  he  must  perform  and  which  not. 

"  Observe  the  Sabbath,  be  circumcised,  do  not  steal, 
drink  no  intoxicating  drink,  kill  no  living  being,  give 
the  tithe  to  the  poor,  make  your  ablutions,  and  pray  five 
times  a  day,"  and  so  fortli,  —  such  are  the  injunctions 
of  external  religious  teachings,  —  of  the  Brahmanical, 
Buddhistic,  Mohammedan,  Hebrew,  and  the  ecclesiastic, 
falsely  called  Christian. 

The  other  way  is  to  indicate  to  man  unattainable  per- 
fection, the  striving  after  which  man  is  cognizant  of :  man 
has  pointed  out  to  him  the  ideal,  in  relation  to  which  he 
is  at  any  time  able  to  see  the  degree  of  his  divergence 
from  it. 

"  Love  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul, 
and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  thy  neighbour  as  thyself.  — 
Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in  Heaven 
is  perfect." 

Such  is  the  teaching  of  Christ. 

The  verification  of  the  execution  of  external  religious 
tenets  is  the  coincidence  of  the  acts  with  the  injunctions 
of  these  tenets,  and  this  coincidence  is  possible. 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       427 

The  verification  of  the  execution  of  Christ's  teaching 
is  the  consciousness  of  the  degree  of  its  non-correspond- 
euce  with  the  ideal  perfection.  (The  degree  of  approx- 
imation is  not  visible ;  what  is  visible  is  the  deflection 
from  perfection.) 

A  man  who  professes  an  external  law  is  a  man  who  is 
standing  in  the  light  of  a  lamp  which  is  attached  to  a 
post.  He  is  standing  in  the  light  of  this  lamp,  he  sees 
the  light,  and  he  has  no  other  place  to  go  to.  A  man  who 
professes  the  teaching  of  Christ  is  like  a  man  carrying  a 
lamp  before  him  on  a  more  or  less  long  pole :  the  hght  is 
always  before  him ;  it  always  incites  him  to  follow  it,  and 
continually  opens  up  in  front  of  him  a  new  illuminated 
space  which  draws  him  on. 

The  Pharisee  thanks  God  for  executing  everything. 

The  rich  youth  also  executes  everything  from  his  child- 
hood, and  he  cannot  understand  what  may  be  wanting  to 
him.  Nor  can  they  think  otherwise :  there  is  not  in  front 
of  them  that  toward  which  they  may  continue  to  strive. 
The  tithe  has  been  delivered,  the  Sabbath  has  been 
kept,  the  parents  are  respected,  there  is  no  adultery,  no 
theft,  no  murder.  What  else  shall  it  be  ?  But  in  him 
who  professes  the  Christian  teaching  the  attainment  of 
any  new  round  of  perfection  incites  the  necessity  of  step- 
ping on  the  next  round,  from  which  a  still  higher  round 
is  perceived,  and  so  on  without  end.  He  who  professes 
Christ's  Law  is  always  in  the  position  of  the  publican. 
He  always  feels  himself  imperfect,  not  seeing  the  road 
behind  him,  which  he  has  passed,  but  only  the  road  in 
front  of  him,  which  he  has  not  yet  travelled  upon  and 
which  he  must  pass  over. 

In  this  consists  the  difference  between  the  teaching  of 
Christ  and  all  other  religious  teachings,  —  a  difference 
consisting  not  in  the  difference  of  demands,  but  in  the 
difference  of  the  way  of  guiding  men.  Christ  gave  no 
definitions  of  life.     He  never  established  any  institutions, 


42S       EPILOCiUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

he  never  established  marriage.  But  people  who  do  not 
understand  the  peculiarities  of  Christ's  teaching,  who  are 
accustomed  to  external  tenets,  and  who  wish  to  feel  them- 
selves in  the  right,  as  does  the  Pharisee,  contrary  to  the 
whole  spirit  of  Christ's  teaching,  —  hr.ve  out  of  the  letter 
made  au  external  teaching  of  rules,  and  have  substituted 
this  teaching  for  Christ's  true  teaching  of  the  ideal. 

The  church  teachings,  which  call  themselves  Christian, 
have  in  all  manifestations  of  life  substituted  for  Christ's 
teaching  and  ideal  the  external  injunctions  and  rules 
which  are  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  teaching.  This 
has  l)8en  done  in  reference  to  government,  courts,  armies, 
churches,  divine  service ;  this  has  also  been  done  in 
reference  to  marriage.  Disregarding  the  fact  that  Christ 
nowhere  established  marriage,  —  on  the  contrary,  when- 
ever he  mentioned  an  external  rule  it  was  to  oppose 
it  ("  Forsake  thy  wife  and  follow  me "),  —  the  church 
teachings,  which  call  themselves  Christian,  have  estab- 
lished marriage  as  a  Christian  institution,  that  is,  they 
have  established  external  observances  which  make  sexual 
love  sinless  and  entirely  lawful  for  a  Christian. 

Since  in  the  true  Christian  teaching  there  are  no  foun- 
dations for  the  institution  of  marriage,  the  result  has  been 
that  people  of  our  world  have  departed  from  one  shore 
without  landing  on  the  other,  that  is,  they  do  not  believe, 
in  reality,  in  the  church  definitions  of  marriage,  feeling 
that  this  institution  has  no  foundation  in  the  Christian 
teaching,  and  at  the  same  time  not  seeing  before  them 
Christ's  ideal,  which  is  concealed  by  the  church  doctrine, 
—  the  striving  after  complete  chastity,  they  are  left  with- 
out any  guidance  in  relation  to  marriage.  From  this  comes 
the  seemingly  strange  phenomenon  that  with  the  Jews, 
Mohammedans,  Lamaists,  and  others,  who  profess  relig- 
ious teachings  of  a  much  lower  order  than  the  Christian, 
but  who  possess  precise  external  injunctions  in  regard  to 
marriage,  the  family  principle  and  conjugal  fidelity  are 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       429 

incomparably  more  firmly  rooted  than  with  the  so-called 
Christians. 

They  have  definite  concubinage,  and  polygamy,  and 
polyandry,  limited  by  certain  restrictions.  But  with  us 
there  is  complete  looseness,  —  there  is  concubinage,  and 
polygamy,  and  polyandry,  not  subject  to  any  limitations, 
and  concealed  under  the  aspect  of  supposed  monogamy. 

Only  because  over  a  small  part  of  the  persons  united 
the  clergy  performs  a  certain  ceremony,  called  church 
marriage,  people  of  our  world  naively  or  hypocritically 
imagine  that  they  are  living  in  matrimony. 

There  cannot  be  and  never  has  been  such  a  thing  as 
Christian  marriage,  just  as  there  has  not  been  and  cannot 
be  a  Christian  divine  service  (Matt.  vi.  5—12  ;  John  iv.  21), 
nor  any  Christian  teachers  and  fathers  (Matt,  xxiii.  8-10), 
nor  Christian  property,  nor  army,  nor  courts,  nor  state. 

Thus  the  early  Christians  always  understood  it. 

The  Christian's  ideal  is  love  of  God  and  his  neighbour, 
self-renunciation  in  order  to  serve  God  and  his  neighbour  ; 
carnal  love,  marriage,  means  serving  oneself,  and  there- 
fore is,  in  any  case,  a  hindrance  in  the  service  of  God  and 
men,  and,  consequently,  from  the  Christian  point  of  view, 
a  fall,  a  sin. 

Entering  into  matrimony  cannot  cooperate  with  the 
service  of  God  and  men  even  in  that  case  when  those 
who  enter  into  marriage  have  in  view  the  continuation 
of  the  human  race.  Eather  than  enter  into  marriage  in 
order  to  procreate  children,  it  would  be  much  simpler  for 
such  people  to  sustain  and  save  the  lives  of  those  millions 
of  children  who  are  perishing  around  us  through  want  of 
material,  not  to  say  of  spiritual,  food. 

Only  then  could  a  Christian  enter  into  marriage  with- 
out the  consciousness  of  a  fall,  a  sin,  if  he  saw  and  knew 
all  the  existinej  lives  of  children  to  be  secure. 

"We  may  reject  the  teaching  of  Christ,  that  teaching 
which  permeates  all  our   life  and  upon  which  all  our 


430       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

morality  is  based,  but,  if  we  accept  this  teaching,  we  can- 
not fail  to  acknowledge  that  it  points  out  the  ideal  of 
complete  chastity. 

The  Gospel  says  clearly  and  without  any  possibility 
of  misinterpretation,  in  the  first  place,  that  a  married 
man  must  not  be  divorced  from  his  wife,  in  order  to 
take  another,  and  that  he  must  live  with  the  one  with 
whom  he  has  come  together  (Matt.  v.  31-32;  xix.  8); 
in  the  second  place,  that  for  man  in  general,  both  mar- 
ried and  unmarried  man,  it  is  sinful  to  look  upon  woman 
as  an  object  of  enjoyment  (Matt.  v.  28-29),  and,  in 
the  third  place,  that  for  an  unmarried  man  it  is  better 
not  to  marry  at  all,  that  is,  to  be  absolutely  chaste  (Matt, 
xix.  10-12). 

Many,  very  many  people  will  regard  these  thoughts  as 
strange  and  even  contradictory.  They  really  are  contra- 
dictory, but  not  among  themselves.  These  thoughts  are 
contradictory  to  our  whole  life,  and  involuntarily  the 
doubt  arises  who  is  right :  these  thoughts,  or  the  lives  of 
milhons  of  people  and  my  own  ?  I  experienced  the  same 
feeling  in  the  highest  degree,  as  I  arrived  at  the  convic- 
tions which  I  am  expounding  here :  I  had  not  in  the 
least  expected  that  the  progress  of  my  thoughts  would 
bring  me  to  what  it  has.  I  was  terrified  at  my  deduc- 
tions and  wished  not  to  believe  them,  but  it  was  impos- 
sible not  to  believe.  However  much  these  deductions 
contradict  the  whole  structure  of  our  life,  however  much 
they  contradict  that  which  I  thought  and  expressed 
before,  i  was  compelled  to  acknowledge  them. 

"All  these  are  general  reflections,  which  may  be  just. 
But  they  refer  to  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  are  obliga- 
tory for  those  who  profess  it ;  but  life  is  life,  and  it  is 
impossible,  by  pointing  out  Christ's  unattainable  ideal, 
to  leave  people  in  one  of  the  most  burning  and  common 
questions,  which  produces  most  misery,  with  nothing  but 
this  ideal  and  without  any  guidance  whatsoever. 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       431 

"  A  young,  impassioned  man  will  at  first  be  carried 
away  by  tbe  ideal ;  then  he  will  not  be  able  to  endure  it 
and  will  break  loose,  and,  not  knowmg,  nor  acknowledg- 
ing any  rules,  he  will  fall  into  complete  debauchery  ! " 

Thus  they  reason  usually. 

"  Christ's  ideal  is  unattainable,  therefore  it  cannot  serve 
us  as  a  guide  of  life ;  we  may  speak  and  dream  of  it,  but 
it  is  not  applicable  to  life,  and  therefore  we  must  abandon 
it.  We  need,  not  an  ideal,  but  a  rule,  a  guidance,  which 
shall  be  according  to  our  strength,  according  to  the  mean 
average  of  the  moral  powers  of  our  society :  an  honour- 
able church  marriage,  or  even  one  which  is  not  entirely 
honourable,  where  one  of  the  parties  entering  into  matri- 
mony, as  the  man  with  us,  has  already  come  together 
with  many  individuals  of  the  other  sex,  or  at  least  mar- 
riage with  the  possibility  of  divorce,  or  civil  marriage,  or 
(proceeding  in  the  same  path)  a  Japanese  marriage,  for  a 
definite  time,  —  why  may  we  not  also  reach  the  houses 
of  prostitution  ? " 

They  say  that  this  is  better  than  street  debauchery. 
The  trouble  is  that,  having  allowed  ourselves  to  degrade 
the  ideal  in  accordauce  with  our  weakness,  we  are  unable 
to  find  tlie  limit  at  which  to  stop. 

But  tliis  reflection  is  false  from  the  start :  first  of  all 
it  is  a  false  supposition  that  the  ideal  of  infinite  perfec- 
tion cannot  be  a  guidance  for  life,  and  that,  looking  at  it, 
it  is  necessary  to  dismiss  it  with  a  motion  of  the  hand, 
saying  that  it  is  useless  to  me  because  I  can  never  attain 
it,  or  to  degrade  the  ideal  to  the  level  on  which  my 
weakness  wants  to  stand. 

To  reflect  in  this  manner  is  the  same  as  though  a  navi- 
gator should  say :  "  Since  I  cannot  go  in  the  direction 
indicated  by  the  compass,  I  shall  throw  away  the  com- 
pass or  cease  looking  at  it,  that  is,  I  will  abandon  the 
ideal  or  will  fasten  the  needle  of  the  compass  to  the  place 
which  at  a  given  moment  wHl  correspond  to  the  direction 


432       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

of  my  A'essel,  that  is,  I  will  degrade  the  ideal  in  accord- 
ance with  my  weakness." 

The  ideal  of  perfection  which  Christ  has  given  us  is  not 
a  dream  or  a  subject  for  rhetorical  sermons,  but  a  most 
necessary,  most  accessible  guide  of  moral  life  for  man, 
just  as  the  compass  is  a  necessary  and  accessible  imple- 
ment guiding  the  navigator ;  all  that  is  necessary  is  to 
believe  in  the  one  as  in  the  other.  In  whatever  situation 
a  man  may  be,  the  teaching  about  the  ideal,  given  by 
Christ,  is  sufficient  in  order  to  obtain  the  safest  indication 
of  those  acts  which  one  may  and  which  one  may  not  per- 
form. But  it  is  necessary  completely  to  believe  in  this 
teaching,  this  one  teaching,  and  to  stop  believing  in  any 
other,  just  as  it  is  necessary  for  the  navigator  to  believe 
in  the  compass,  and  to  stop  looking  at  and  being  guided 
by  what  he  sees  on  both  sides.  One  must  know  how  to 
be  guided  by  the  Christian  teaching,  how  to  be  guided  by 
the  compass,  and  for  this  it  is  most  important  to  under- 
stand one's  position,  and  to  be  able  not  to  be  afraid  pre- 
cisely to  indicate  one's  own  deflection  from  the  one,  ideal 
direction.  No  matter  on  what  round  man  may  stand, 
there  is  always  a  possibility  of  his  approaching  this  ideal, 
and  no  position  of  his  can  be  such  that  he  should  be  able 
to  say  that  he  has  attained  it  and  no  longer  can  strive 
after  a  greater  approximation. 

Such  is  the  striving  of  man  after  the  Cliristian-  ideal  in 
general  and  after  chastity  in  particular.  If  the  most  varied 
positions  of  people,  from  innocent  childhood  until  mar- 
riage, when  continence  is  not  practised,  were  to  be  con- 
sidered in  respect  to  the  sexual  question,  then  at  every 
stage  between  these  two  positions  the  teaching  of  Christ, 
with  its  ideal  which  it  puts  forward,  will  always  serve  as 
a  clear  and  definite  guide  to  what  man  ought  and  ought 
not  to  do  at  every  one  of  these  stages. 

What  are  a  pure  young  man  and  girl  to  do  ?  To  keep 
themselves  pure  against  temptations,  and,  in  order  that 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       433 

they  may  be  able  to  give  all  their  strength  to  the  service 
of  God  and  men,  to  strive  after  a  greater  and  greater 
chastity  of  thoughts  and  desires. 

What  are  a  young  man  and  girl  to  do,  who  have  fallen 
a  prey  to  temptations,  whose  thoughts  are  absorbed  in 
indefinite  love  or  in  love  for  a  certain  individual,  and 
who  thus  have  lost  a  certain  portion  of  their  ability  to 
serve  God  and  men  ?  Again  the  same :  not  to  allow 
themselves  to  fall,  knowing  that  such  weakness  will  not 
free  them  from  temptation,  but  will  only  strengthen  it, 
and  to  continue  to  strive  after  greater  and  greater  chas- 
tity in  order  to  be  able  the  more  fully  to  serve  God  and 
men. 

What  are  people  to  do  if  they  have  not  come  out  victo- 
rious from  the  struggle  and  have  fallen  ?  To  look  upon 
their  fall  not  as  a  lawful  enjoyment,  as  people  now  do, 
when  it  is  justified  by  the  ceremony  of  marriage,  not  as 
an  accidental  enjoyment  which  may  be  repeated  with 
others,  not  as  a  misfortune  if  the  fall  has  been  committed 
with  an  inferior  person  and  without  the  ceremony, 
but  to  look  upon  this  first  fall  as  the  only  one,  and 
upon  themselves  as  having  entered  upon  an  indissoluble 
marriage. 

This  entering  into  marriage,  with  the  consequences 
springing  from  it,  the  birth  of  children,  determines  for 
those  who  have  entered  into  matrimony  a  new,  more  hm- 
ited  form  of  serving  God  and  men.  Before  marriage  man 
could  serve  God  and  men  directly,  in  most  varied  forms, 
but  his  entering  into  matrimony  limits  his  field  of  action 
and  demands  of  him  the  bringing  up  and  education  of  the 
progeny  arising  from  marriage,  the  future  servants  of  God 
and  men. 

What  are  a  man  and  a  woman  to  do,  who  are  living  in 
wedlock  and  performing  that  limited  service  of  God  and 
men,  by  means  of  bringing  up  and  educating  their  chil- 
dren, as  befits  their  position  ? 


434       EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA 

Again  the  same :  to  strive  together  after  liberation 
from  temptation,  after  self-purification,  and  cessation  of 
sin,  bj'  exchauging  the  relations  which  impede  the  general 
and  particular  service  of  God  and  men,  by  exchanging 
carnal  love  for  the  pure  relations  of  brother  and  sister. 

Therefore  it  is  not  true  that  we  are  not  able  to  be 
guided  by  Christ's  ideal  because  it  is  so  high,  so  perfect, 
and  so  unattainable.  We  cannot  be  guided  by  it  only 
because  we  are  lying  to  ourselves  and  deceiving  our- 
selves. 

When  we  say  that  we  must  have  more  realizable  rules 
than  Christ's  ideal,  or  else  we,  without  reaching  Christ's 
ideal,  shall  fall  into  debauchery,  we  do  not  mean  by  this 
that  Christ's  ideal  is  too  high  for  us,  but  that  we  do  not 
believe  in  it  and  that  we  do  not  wish  to  determine  our 
acts  by  this  ideal. 

When  we  say  that  having  once  fallen  we  become  sub- 
ject to  debauchery,  we  only  say  by  this  that  we  have 
decided  in  advance  that  a  fall  with  an  inferior  individual 
is  not  a  sin,  but  a  pastime,  an  infatuation,  which  need  not 
be  mended  by  what  we  call  marriage.  But  if  we  under- 
stood that  the  fall  is  a  sin  which  must  and  can  be  re- 
deemed only  by  the  indissolubility  of  marriage  and  all 
the  activity  which  springs  from  the  education  of  children 
born  in  wedlock,  then  the  fall  could  in  no  way  be  the 
cause  of  becoming  debauched. 

This  would,  in  reality,  be  the  same  as  though  a  farmer 
should  not  consider  as  a  sowing  that  sowing  which  gave 
him  no  crop,  but,  sowing  in  a  second  and  third  place, 
should  regard  as  real  sowing  that  which  was  successful. 
It  is  obvious  that  that  man  would  ruin  much  land  and 
seed,  and  would  never  learn  to  sow  properly.  Make  chas- 
tity your  ideal,  consider  every  fall,  of  any  person,  with 
any  person,  as  the  only  marriage,  indissoluble  through  life, 
and  it  wdll  become  clear  that  the  guidance  given  by  Christ 
is  not  only  sufficient  but  also  the  only  possible. 


EPILOGUE    TO    THE    KREUTZER    SONATA       435 

"  Man  is  weak,  —  he  must  receive  a  task  which  is 
according  to  his  strength,"  say  people.  This  amounts 
to  saying :  "  My  hands  are  weak  and  I  cannot  draw  a 
straight  line,  that  is,  one  which  is  the  shortest  distance 
between  two  jjoints,  and  therefore,  in  order  to  make  it 
easier  for  myself,  though  wishing  to  draw  a  straight  line, 
I  will  take  a  curved  or  a  broken  line  as  my  guide."  The 
weaker  my  hand  is,  the  more  perfect  must  my  guide  be. 

It  is  not  right,  having  come  to  know  the  Christian 
teaching  of  the  ideal,  to  act  as  though  we  did  not  know 
it,  and  to  substitute  external  definitions  for  it.  The  Chris- 
tian teaching  of  the  ideal  is  open  to  humanity  because  it 
can  guide  it  at  its  present  age.  Humanity  has  passed 
out  from  external  religious  injunctions,  and  nobody  ■ 
believes  in  them. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  the  ideal  is  the  only  one 
which  can  guide  humanity.  We  must  not,  we  should 
not  substitute  external  rules  for  the  ideal  of  Christ,  but 
this  ideal  must  be  kept  firmly  before  us  in  all  its  purity, 
and,  above  everything  else,  we  must  believe  in  it. 

To  him  who  was  navigating  near  the  shore  it  was 
possible  to  say :  "  Watch  that  elevation,  promontory, 
tower,"   and   so  forth. 

But  a  time  came  when  the  navigators  passed  away 
from  the  shore,  and  their  guides  could  be  and  must  be 
only  the  unattainable  luminaries  and  the  compass  which 
points  out  the  direction.     Both  are  given  to  us. 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN 
THE   SEXES 

i88 i8qo 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN 
THE   SEXES 


Among  the  letters  which  I  received  from  various  places 
in  reference  to  the  "  Kreutzer  Sonata  "  and  the  "  Epilogue," 
vphich  show  that  the  necessity  of  changing  our  view  on 
the  relation  of  the  sexes  has  been  recognized  by  others 
as  well,  —  by  a  large  majority  of  thinking  people,  whose 
voices  are  not  heard  and  not  noticed  only  because  they 
are  drowned  by  the  cry  of  the  people  of  the  crowd,  who 
stubbornly  and  rancorously  defend  the  usual  order  of 
things,  which  abets  their  passions,  —  among  these  letters 
I  received,  on  October  7,  1890,  the  following  letter, 
with  the  enclosure  of  a  pamphlet  entitled  Diana,  of 
which  it  makes  mention.      Here  is  the  letter: 

«  New  York,  October  7,  1890. 

"  We  have  the  pleasure  of  sending  you  a  small  pam- 
phlet entitled :  Diana,  a  psycho-physiological  essay  on 
sexual  relations  for  married  men  and  tvomen,  which,  we 
hope,  you  will  receive. 

"  Ever  since  your  production,  *  The  Kreutzer  Sonata,' 
made  its  appearance  in  America,  many  have  been  saying : 
Diana  fulfils,  explains,  and  makes  possible  Tolstoy's 
theories.  And  so  we  have  decided  to  send  you  this 
pamphlet,  so  that  you  may  be  able  to  judge  for  yourself. 

"  Prating  that  the  wish  of  your  heart  be  fulfilled,  we 
remain.  Yours  sincerely.  Burns  Co. 

"  We  shall  be  happy  if  you  inform  us  of  the  receipt  of 
the  pamphlet." 

439 


440     ON    THE    RELATION-    BETWEEN"    THE    SEXES 

Before  that  I  had  received  from  France  a  letter  from 
Angfele  Frau9oise  and  her  pamphlet. 

In  this  letter  Mrs.  Aiig^le  informed  me  of  the  existence 
of  two  societies  which  have  for  their  aim  the  encourage- 
ment of  the  purity  of  the  sexual  relations,  —  one  in  Eng- 
land, and  another  in  France,  —  Societe  d'amoicr  pur.  In  the 
article  by  Mrs.  Angfele  the  same  thoughts  were  expressed 
as  in  the  Diana,  but  less  clearly  and  less  definitely,  and 
with  a  shade  of  mysticism. 

The  thoughts  expressed  in  the  pamphlet  Diana,  though 
having  at  their  base  not  the  Christian,  but  rather  a  pagan, 
Platonic  world  conception,  are  so  new  and  so  interesting, 
and  so  obviously  show  the  irrationality  of  the  established 
dissipation,  both  in  the  celibate  and  in  the  married  life  of 
our  society,  that  I  want  to  share  these  thoughts  with  my 
readers. 

The  fundamental  idea  of  the  pamphlet,  the  motto 
of  which  is,  "  And  they  twain  shall  be  one  flesh,"  is  the 
following : 

The  difference  in  the  organization  of  man  and  woman 
exists  not  only  in  a  physiological  relation,  but  also  in 
other  moral  qualities,  which  in  man  are  called  mascu- 
linity, in  woman  femininity.  The  attraction  between  the 
sexes  is  not  based  on  the  striving  after  physical  inter- 
course alone,  but  also  on  mutual  attraction,  which  these 
opposite  properties  of  the  sexes  exert  upon  one  another, 
femininity  upon  man  and  masculinity  upon  woman.  One 
sex  strives  to  be  complemented  by  the  other,  and  so  the 
attraction  between  the  sexes  produces  an  equal  tendency 
toward  the  spiritual  as  toward  the  physical  union.  The 
strivings  after  physical  and  after  spiritual  intercourse  are 
manifestations  of  one  and  the  same  source  of  attrac- 
tion, which  are  in  such  interdependence  that  the  gratifi- 
cation of  one  striving  invariably  weakens  the  other.  In 
proportion  as  the  striving  after  spiritual  intercourse  is 
satisfied,  the  striving  after  the  physical  union  is  weakened 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  441 

or  entirely  destroyed,  and  vice  versa:  the  gratification 
of  the  physical  attraction  M^eakens  and  destroys  the 
spiritual.  And  so  the  attraction  between  the  sexes  is  npt 
merely  physical,  productive  of  the  propagation  of  children, 
but  also  the  striving  of  the  two  sexes  toward  oue  another, 
capable  of  assuming  the  form  of  the  most  spiritual  inter- 
course of  ideas  alone,  of  mere  animal  intercourse,  produc- 
tive of  the  propagation  of  children,  aud  of  all  the  various 
steps  between  the  two.  The  question  as  to  the  degree  at 
which  the  approximation  of  the  sexes  stops  is  decided 
by  this,  what  intercourse  the  uniting  pair  consider  good, 
necessary,  and  so  desirable  for  a  given  time  or  for  ever, 
(A  remarkable  illustration  of  the  fact  that  the  relation 
between  the  sexes  is  subject  to  the  conception  of  what  is 
considered  good,  necessary,  aud  desirable  is  found  in  the 
striking  custom  of  Little-Eussian  "  bridegrooming,"  which 
consists  m  this,  that  the  betrothed  lads  for  years  pass  the 
nights  with  their  brides  without  violating  their  virginity.) 
A  full  gratification  for  the  individual  uniting  pair 
is  found  in  the  degree  which  these  persons  consider  good, 
necessary,  and  desirable,  and  depends  on  their  personal 
view.  But  independently  of  it,  naturally,  objectively,  one 
degree  of  intercourse  must  give  more  satisfaction  to  all 
than  any  other  form  of  it.  Now  what  intercourse  gives 
this  highest  satisfaction  naturally,  to  all,  independently 
of  the  personal  view  of  the  uniting  pair,  —  the  one  which 
approaches  the  spiritual,  or  the  one  which  approaches  the 
physical  ?  The  answer  to  this  question,  clear  and  indu- 
bitable, though  contradicting  everything  which  people  in 
our  society  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking  about  it,  consists 
in  this,  that  the  nearer  the  form  of  intercourse  is  to 
the  physical  limit,  the  more  is  the  desire  fanned,  and  the 
less  satisfaction  is  received ;  the  nearer  it  is  to  the  oppo- 
site extreme,  to  the  spiritual  limit,  the  less  are  new  de- 
sires evoked,  the  fuller  is  the  satisfaction.  The  nearer 
to  the  first,  the  more  destructive  of  vital  force,  and  the 


442  ON"  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

nearer  to  the  second,  the  spiritual,  the  more  calm,  joyous, 
and  strong  is  the  mutual  condition. 

The  union  of  man  and  woman  into  one  flesh,  in  the 
form  of  inseparable  monogamy,  the  author  considers  an 
indispensable  condition  of  the  highest  human  develop- 
ment. Marriage,  therefore,  forming  a  natural  and  desir- 
able condition  for  all  men  who  have  reached  maturity, 
is,  according  to  the  author,  not  necessarily  a  physical 
union,  but  may  also  be  spiritual.  According  to  conditions 
and  temperaments,  but  chiefly,  according  to  what  the 
uniting  pair  consider  necessary,  good,  and  desirable,  mar- 
riage will  for  some  time  approach  spiritual  intercourse,  and 
for  others  physical  intercourse  ;  but  the  more  the  inter- 
course will  approach  the  spiritual,  the  fuller  will  its 
satisfaction  be. 

Since  the  author  recognizes  that  the  same  sexual  ten- 
dencies may  lead  to  spiritual  intercourse,  - —  to  love, ; —  and 
to  physical  intercourse,  —  to  productiveness  and  child- 
birth, —  and  since  one  activity  passes  into  the  other  in 
dependence  on  consciousness,  he  naturally  not  only  does 
not  recognize  the  impossibility  of  continence,  but  even 
considers  it  natural  and  a  necessary  condition  of  a  rational 
sexual  hygiene,  both  in  marriage  and  outside  it. 

The  whole  article  is  enhanced  by  a  rich  selection  of 
examples  and  illustrations  of  what  it  tells  about,  and 
by  physiological  data  as  to  the  processes  of  the  sexual 
relations,  their  effects  upon  the  organism,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  consciously  directing  them  upon  this  path  or  that, 
—  to  love  or  to  productiveness.  In  confirmation  of  his 
idea  the  author  quotes  the  words  of  Herbert  Spencer: 
"  If  a  certain  law,"  says  Spencer,  "  contributes  to  the  good 
of  the  human  race,  human  nature  will  of  necessity  sub- 
mit to  it,  so  that  the  submission  to  it  will  become  a  pleas- 
ure to  man."  And  so  we  must  not,  says  the  author, 
depend  too  much  on  established  habits  and  conditions 
which  now  surround  us,  but  must  rather  look  upon  what 


ON    THE    KELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES     443 

a  man  must  and  can  be  in  the  brilliant  future  before 
him. 

The  author  expounds  the  essence  of  everything  said  as 
follows.  The  fundamental  theory  of  Diana  is  this,  that 
the  relations  between  the  sexes  have  two  functions :  the 
productive  and  the  love  function,  and  that  the  sexual  force, 
so  long  as  there  is  no  conscious  desire  to  have  children, 
ought  always  to  be  directed  upon  the  path  of  love.  The 
manifestation  which  this  force  will  assume  depends  on 
reason  and  on  habits,  in  consequence  of  which  the  gradual 
agreement  of  reason  with  the  principle  here  expounded 
and  the  gradual  formation  of  habits  in  agreement  with 
them  will  free  men  from  many  sufferings  and  will  give 
them  the  gratification  of  their  sexual  strivings. 

At  the  end  of  the  book  there  is  added  a  remarkable 
"  Letter  to  parents  and  instructors,"  by  Eliza  Burns. 
This  letter,  though  treating  subjects  which  are  considered 
indecent  (caUing  things  by  their  names,  and  indeed  it 
could  not  be  otherwise),  can  have  such  a  beneficent 
influence  upon  unfortunate  youth,  which  is  suffering  from 
excesses  and  irregularities,  that  the  dissemination  of  this 
letter  among  growTi  men  who  in  vain  ruin  their  best  forces 
and  their  good,  and  chiefly  among  poor  boys  perishiog 
only  through  ignorance,  in  families,  schools,  gymnasia,  and 
especially  military  schools  and  closed  institutions,  would 
•be  a  true  benefaction. 

October  I4, 1890. 


EXTEACTS   FROM   DIARIES   AND   PRIVATE 

LETTERS 

On  sexual  intercourse  I  have  expressed  my  view,  as 
much  as  I  could,  in  the  epilogue  to  "  The  Kreutzer  Sonata." 
The  whole  question  is  decided  briefly  :  a  man  must  always, 
under  all  circumstances,  —  whether  he  is  married  or  single, 
—  be  as  chaste  as  possible,  as  Christ  said,  and  Paul  after 
him.  If  he  can  be  so  continent  as  not  to  know  a  woman 
at  all,  that  is  the  best  he  can  do.  But  if  he  cannot  con- 
tain himself,  he  must  as  rarely  as  possible  submit  to  this 
weakness,  and  by  no  means  look  upon  the  sexual  inter- 
course as  upon  a  "  jouissance."  I  think  that  any  sincere 
and  serious  man  cannot  help  but  look  upon  the  matter  in 
this  way,  and  that  all  men  of  this  kind  agree  upon  this. 

And  there  is  a  letter  from  the  editor  of  Tlie  Adult  on 
free  love.  If  I  had  time,  I  should  like  to  write  on  this 
subject.  No  doubt  I  will  write  about  it.  The  main 
thing  is  to  show  that  the  whole  question  is  in  securing 
the  greatest  amount  of  pleasure  for  oneself,  without  any 
thought  of  the  consequences.  Besides,  they  preach  what 
already  exists  and  is  very  bad.  Why  will  the  absence  of 
external  restraint  mend  the  whole  matter?  I  am,  of 
course,  against  all  regulation  and  for  full  liberty,  but  the 
ideal  is  chastity,  and  not  enjoyment. 

All  the  calamities  which  are  begot  by  the  sexual  rela- 
tions, by  amorousness,  are  due  to  nothing  but  this,  that 
we  mix  up  the  carnal  lust  with  the  spiritual  life,  with, — 

444 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  445 

it  is  terrible  to  say  so,  —  with  love ;  we  employ  our  reason, 
not  to  condemn  and  determine  this  passion,  but  to  deck 
it  out  with  the  peacock  feathers  of  spirituality. 

This  is  where  les  extremes  se  touchent.  To  ascribe  all 
the  attraction  between  the  sexes  to  sexual  lust  seems  very 
material,  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  most  spiritual 
relation  —  to  segregate  from  the  spiritual  sphere  every- 
thing which  does  not  belong  to  it,  in  order  to  be  able  to 
esteem  it  highly. 

Passion,  the  source  of  the  greatest  calamities,  we  do  not 
lower  or  moderate,  but,  on  the  contrary,  fan  with  all  our 
means,  and  then  we  complain  that  we  suffer. 

A  woman  who  dresses  herself  up  fans  the  passion  in 
herself.  Even  while  dressing  others  up,  she  hves  in 
imagination  in  lust.  For  this  reason  -dresses  exert  such 
an  influence  on  women. 

Fornicator  is  not  a  curse  word,  but  a  condition  (I  think 
harlot  is,  too),  a  condition  of  unrest,  curiosity,  and  demand 
for  novelty  (like  a  drunkard),  which  comes  from  inter- 
course for  pleasure's  sake,  not  with  one,  but  with  many. 
One  can  contain  oneself,  but  a  drunkard  is  a  drunkard, 
and  a  fornicator  is  a  fornicator,  and  they  fall  with  the 
first  weakening. 

What  weakens  us  in  our  struggle  with  temptation  is 
this,  that  we  busy  ourselves  in  advance  with  the  idea  of 
victory,  that  we  take  up  a  task  which  is  above  our  strength, 
a  task  which  it  is  not  in  our  power  to  do,  or  not  to  do. 
We  say  to  ourselves  in  advance,  like  a  monk  :  "  I  promise 
to  be  chaste,"  meaning  by  it  external  chastity.  This  is,  in 
the  first  place,  impossible,  because  we  cannot  imagine 
those  conditions  in  which  we  may  be  placed,  and  in  which 
we  shall  not  withstand  the  temptation.  And,  besides,  it 
is  bad ;  it  is  bad,  because  it  does  not  aid  us  in  reaching 


446  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

the  goal,  in  approaching  the  highest  chastity,  but  on  the 
contrary. 

Having  decided  that  their  task  consists  in  observing 
external  chastity,  they  either  leave  the  world,  avpid 
women,  like  the  monks  on  Mount  Athos,  or  make  them- 
selves eunuchs  and  disdain  that  which  is  most  important, 
the  internal  struggle  witli  besetting  thoughts  in  the  world, 
amidst  temptations.  This  is  the  same  as  though  a  soldier 
should  say  to  himself  that  he  would  go  to  war,  but  only 
under  the  condition  that  he  should  be  certain  to  be  vic- 
torious. Such  a  soldier  will  have  to  avoid  real  enemies 
and  to  fight  with  imaginary  foes.  Such  a  soldier  will  not 
learn  how  to  fight  and  will  always  be  bad. 

Besides,  this  placing  before  oneself  the  task  of  external 
chastity  and  the  hope,  sometimes  the  certainty,  of  realiz- 
ing it,  have  also  this  disadvantage,  that,  striving  after  it, 
every  temptation  to  which  man  is  subject,  and  so  much 
the  more  the  fall,  at  once  destroys  everything  and  makes 
one  doubt  the  possibility,  even  the  legality,  of  the  struggle. 
"  Consequently  it  is  impossible  to  be  chaste,  and  I  have 
put  a  false  task  before  myself."  And  it  is  all  over,  and 
the  man  abandons  himself  completely  to  lust  and  sinks 
in  it.  It  is  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  a  soldier  with  an 
amulet,  which  in  his  imagination  makes  him  immune 
against  death  and  wounds.  Such  a  soldier  loses  his  last 
bit  of  valour,  and  runs  away  at  the  slightest  wound  or 
scratch  which  he  receives. 

Only  this  can  be  the  task :  the  attainment  of  the 
greatest  chastity,  in  conformity  with  my  character,  my 
temperament,  and  the  conditions  of  my  past  and  present, 

—  not  before  other  men,  who  do  not  know  what  I  have 
to  struggle  against,  but  before  myself  and  before  God. 
Then  nothing  impairs  or  arrests  the  motion  ;  then  the 
temptation,  even  the  fall,  —  everything  leads  to  one  aim, 

—  to  the  departure  from  the  animal  and  the  approach  to 
God. 


ON    THE    RELATIOI^   BETWEEN    THE    SEXES     447 

The  Christian  teaching  does  not  determine  the  forms  of 
life,  but  only  in  all  relations  of  man  indicates  the  ideal, 
the  direction ;  the  same  is  true  in  the  sexual  question. 
But  the  people  who  are  not  of  a  Christian  spirit  want 
the  determination  of  forms.  For  them  was  invented  the 
church  marriage,  which  has  nothing  Christian  about  it. 
But  in  the  sexual  relations,  as  in  those  others  of  violence, 
of  anger,  we  must  not  and  should  not  leave  out  of  sight 
the  ideal,  or  distort  it.  But  it  is  this  that  the  churchmen 
have  done  with  marriage. 


*&^ 


Through  the  misunderstanding  of  the  Christian  spirit 
people  are  generally  divided  into  Christians  and  non- 
Christians.  The  coarsest  division  consists  in  regarding 
only  him  who  has  been  baptized  as  a  Christian ;  equally 
incorrect  is  the  division  of  men,  though  it  is  less  coarse, 
who  on  the  basis  of  Christ's  teaching  live  a  pure  domestic 
life,  who  are  not  murderers,  etc.,  and  to  call  them  Chris- 
tians in  contradistinction  to  those  who  live  differently. 
In  Christianity  there  is  no  line  of  demarcation  between  a 
Christian  and  a  non-Christian.  There  is  the  light,  the 
ideal  Christ ;  and  there  is  darkness,  the  animal,  and  —  a 
motion,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  toward  Christ  along  this 
path. 

Even  so  the  ideal  in  relation  to  the  sexes  is  full,  com- 
plete chastity.  A  man  who  serves  God  can  wish  as  little 
to  get  married  as  to  get  drunk  ;  but  there  are  various 
stages  on  the  path  to  chastity.  There  is  one  thing  that 
can  be  said  for  those  who  want  an  answer  to  the  question, 
"  Shall  I  get  married,  or  not  ?  "  It  is  this  :  If  you  do  not 
see  the  ideal  of  chastity  and  do  not  feel  the  necessity  of 
abandoning  yourself  to  it,  then  walk  toward  chastity, 
without  knowing  it  yourself,  by  the  unchaste  path  of 
marriage.  Just  as  I,  being  tall  of  stature  and  seeing 
before  me  a  bell-tower,  cannot  point  it  out  to  an  under- 
sized man  who  is  walking  by  my  side  and  does  not  see  it, 


448     ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SF.XES 

as  the  direction  of  his  path,  but  am  obliged  to  poiut  out 
to  him  some  other  laudmark  on  the  same  path:  such  a 
landmark  is  honest  marriage  for  those  who  do  not  see  the 
ideal  of  chastity.  But  this  can  be  pointed  out  by  me  or 
you  ;  Christ  never  pointed  out  anything  else,  nor  could  he 
have  pointed  out  anything  but  chastity. 

To  struggle,  —  even  that  is  life,  and  that  alone  is  life. 
There  is  no  rest  whatever.  The  ideal  is  always  ahead,  and 
I  am  never  calm  so  long  as  I  do  not  move  toward  it,  even 
if  I  do  not  reach  it. 

Take  the  ideal  of  celibacy.  The  gratification  of  the 
physical  sensation,  which  for  a  time  calms  passion,  does 
not  satisfy  me,  just  as  the  feeding  of  all  the  hungry 
around  me  does  not  satisfy  me  in  an  economic  sense. 
What  will  satisfy  you  is  nothing  but  the  clear  con- 
templation of  the  ideal  in  all  its  height,  a  similarly 
clear  contemplation  of  your  weakness  in  all  its  remote- 
ness from  the  ideal,  and  the  striving  after  an  approach  to 
the  ideal.  This  only  will  satisfy  you,  and  not  your  plac- 
ing yourself  in  such  a  position  that  you,  by  half-closing 
your  eyes,  are  able  to  avoid  seeing  the  difference  of  your 
position  from  the  demand  of  the  ideal. 

The  struggle  with  the  sexual  passion  is  a  most  difficult 
struggle,  and  there  is  no  position  and  no  age,  except  first 
childhood  and  the  most  advanced  old  age,  wheii  a  man  is 
free  from  this  struggle,  and  so  we  must  not  be  vexed  by 
this  struggle,  but  must  hope  that  it  is  possible  to  come 
to  a  state  in  which  it  will  not  exist,  and  not  for  a  moment 
weaken,  but  remember  and  use  all  those  means  which 
weaken  the  foe  :  avoid  what  excites  the  body  and  the 
soul,  and  try  to  be  busy.  That  is  one  thing.  Another 
thing  is :  if  you  see  that  you  will  be  vanquished  by  the 
struggle,  —  get  married,  that  is,  choose  a  woman  who 
agrees  to  enter  into  wedlock,  and  say  to  yourself  that  if 


t 

ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  449 

you  cannot  help  falling,  you  will  fall  with  none  other 
than  this  woman,  and  with  her  bring  up  your  children,  if 
there  shall  be  any,  and  with  her,  supporting  her,  arrive  at 
chastity,  the  sooner,  the  better,  I  know  no  other  means. 
But  above  all,  to  be  able  successfully  to  make  use  of 
either  means,  strengthen  your  connection  with  God,  think 
as  frequently  as  you  can  that  you  came  from  Him  and 
return  to  Him,  and  that  the  meaning  and  aim  of  this 
whole  hfe  consists  in  nothing    but  doing  His  will. 

The  more  you  will  remember  Him,  the  more  will  He 
aid  you. 

Another  thing :  Do  not  get  discouraged  if  you  fall ;  do 
not  imagine  that  you  are  lost,  and  that  you  have  no  rea- 
son for  watching  yourself  after  that,  but  must  dissipate. 
On  the  contrary,  if  you  have  fallen,  struggle  on  with 
greater  energy. 

Accesses  of  sexual  passion  beget  a  tangle  of  ideas,  or 
rather,  an  absence  of  ideas.  The  whole  world  will  grow 
dark  ;  the  relation  to  the  world  is  lost.  Accidentalness, 
darkness,  impotence. 

Poor  man,  you  have  suffered  very  much  from  this  ter- 
rible passion,  especially  when  it  is  unbridled,  that  is,  when 
it  has  already  come  into  play.  I  know  how  it  veils 
everything  and  for  a  time  destroys  everything  heart  and 
reason  lived  by.  But  there  is  one  salvation  from  it, — 
and  that  is,  to  know  that  it  is  a  dream,  a  suggestion, 
which  will  pass,  and  I  shall  return  to  real  life,  to  the 
spot  at  which  it  seized  me.  It  is  possible  to  know  this 
even  in  moments  of  its  power.     May  God  help  you. 

Do  not  forget  that  you  have  never  been  and  never  will 
be  completely  chaste,  but  that  you  are  at  a  certain  stage 
of  an  approach  to  chastity,  and  so  you  must  never  get 
discouraged  in  this  approach :  in  moments  of  temptation, 


450   ON  THE  RELA.TION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

in  moments  of  fall  even,  do  not  stop  recognizing  what 
you  are  striving  after,  and  say  to  yourself :  "  I  am  falling, 
but  I  hate  the  fall,  and  I  know  that  if  not  now,  at  least 
later,  the  victory  will  be,  not  on  its  side,  but  on  mine." 

A  man  must  set  himself  the  problem,  not  of  chastity, 
but  of  the  approach  to  chastity.  Strictly  speaking,  a 
hving  man  cannot  be  chaste.  A  living  man  can  only 
strive  after  chastity,  for  the  very  reason  that  he  is  not 
chaste,  but  subject  to  passion.  If  a  man  were  not  sub- 
ject to  passion,  there  would  not  exist  for  him  any 
chastity,  nor  the  concept  of  it.  The  mistake  consists  in 
setting  to  ourselves  the  problem  of  chastity  (of  the  ex- 
ternal condition  of  chastity),  and  not  that  of  striving  after 
chastity,  of  the  internal  acknowledgment  at  all  times 
and  in  all  condition?  of  life  of  the  superiority  of  chas- 
tity to  debauchery,  of  the  superiority  of  greater  purity  to 
lesser. 

This  mistake  is  very  important.  For  a  man  who  has 
set  to  himself  as  the  problem  the  external  condition  of 
chastity,  the  departure  from  this  external  condition,  the 
fall,  destroys  everything  and  interrupts  activity  and  life ; 
for  a  man  who  has  set  to  himself  as  the  problem  the 
striving  after  chastity,  there  is  no  fall,  no  interruption  of 
activity ;  and  temptations,  and  the  fall,  may  fail  to  inter- 
rupt the  striving  after  chastity,  and  frequently  even 
intensify  it. 

When  people  do  not  know  any  other  good  than  per- 
sonal enjoyment  for  themselves  alone,  love,  amorousness, 
presents  itself  as  an  elevation ;  but  having  experienced 
the  sentiment  of  love  for  God  and  for  our  neighbour,  hav- 
ing become  Christians  even  in  the  weakest  degree,  so  long 
as  this  sentiment  is  sincere,  it  is  impossible  to  do  other- 
wise than  look  on  amorousness  from  above  as  on  a  sen- 
timent from  which  it  is   desirable    to    be  freed.      Why 


ox  THE  RELATTOy  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  451 

should  you  not  have  been  satisfied  with  this  Christian, 
brotherly  love  ?  And  so,  pardon  me,  what  you  say  about 
your  love  for  her  supporting  you  in  your  purity,  is  offen- 
sive for  woman.  Every  man,  especially  a  Christian, 
wants  to  be  an  instrument  of  spiritual,  and  not  physical, 
action.  Keep  your  purity  by  your  own  powers,  and  offer 
a  love  which  is  pure  and  free  from  all  advantages.  Do 
not  exchange  God  for  man  ;  God  will  give  you  incompar- 
ably more  of  everything,  even  the  most  unexpected,  and 
will  give  you  the  love  of  that  man  besides.  You  write 
that  you  must  save  her.  I  absolutely  fail  to  see  from 
what.  And  why  and  for  what  do  you  pity  her  ?  Among 
us  people  frequently  repeat  the  mistake  of  wishing  to  get 
married  in  some  special,  new  fashion.  As  Christ  has 
said  and  Paul  has  confirmed,  and  our  reason  confirms,  he 
who  can  contain  himself  and  remain  chaste,  let  him  con- 
tain himself ;  and  who  cannot,  let  him  be  married.  But 
it  is  impossible  to  get  married  in  a  new  fashion  :  one  can- 
not marry  differently  from  the  way  all  get  married,  that 
is,  by  choosing  a  mate,  deciding  to  remain  true  to  her, 
not  abandoning  her  until  the  grave,  and  trying  with  her 
to  reestablish  the  lost  chastity.  Even  though  we  cannot 
ascribe  any  meaning  to  the  performance  of  the  ceremony 
and  of  various  customs,  we  cannot  look  upon  marriage 
in  any  other  way  than  the  rest  understand  it.  It  is 
not  proper  and  it  is  impossible  to  mix  up  any  higher 
religious  consideration  with  marriage.  As  marriage  took 
place  in  a  natural  way,  in  consequence  of  mutual  attrac- 
tion, so  it  will  always  take  place.  And  if  this  mutual 
attraction  be  wanting,  marriage  as  such  is  a  bad  thing. 

I  understand,  I  think,  both  of  you,  and  should  like 
very  much  to  help  you  in  order  to  extract  from  your  rela- 
tions what  is  painful  and  agitating  in  them,  leaving  that 
which  is  good  and  joyful.  She  is  quite  right  when  she 
says  that  exclusive  love  is  not  only  no  love  for  God,  but 


452    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN   THE    SEXES 

even  interferes  with  that  love.  But  this  exclusive  love, 
the  one  which  you  experience  toward  her,  is  a  fact  and 
just  as  indubitable,  and  one  cannot  help  but  count  with 
it  as  with  the  presence  of  the  body  and  the  properties 
of  character,  which  it  is  impossible  to  destroy.  Having 
recognized  the  existence  of  the  fact,  we  must  act  in 
such  a  way  as  to  take  what  is  best  from  it  and  reject 
what  is  bad.  What  is  good  is  the  consciousness  of  the 
lovableness  of  what  is  loved,  and  what  is  loved  is  loved 
not  egotistically,  but  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  one  another 
to  serve  God's  work.  That  is  joy.  But  in  order  that 
this  may  be  joy,  you  must  sterilize  it  well  from  the  exag- 
geration of  amorousness  (and  you  are  guilty  of  this),  from 
the  consequent  and  exclusive  exaction,  jealousy,  and  every 
kind  of  abomination,  which  is  covered  up  with  good 
names.  My  practical  advice  is,  —  do  not  rummage  in 
your  sentiments,  do  not  communicate  everything  to  one 
another  (this  is  not  concealment,  but  reserve),  and  write 
about  yourself,  about  common  matters.  That  you  love 
her  exclusively,  and  she  you,  she  knows,  and  you  know, 
and  so  you  know  all  the  motives  of  your  acts  and  words. 
There  is  a  limit  to  the  interchange  of  sentiments,  which 
must  not  be  crossed,  but  you  have  crossed  it.  This  limit 
is  such  that  beyond  it  every  transmission  of  sentiments 
becomes  not  a  joy,  but  a  burden. 

Make  use  of  that  joy  of  love  which  God  has  sent  you, 
without  forgetting  that  this  is  love,  that  is,  a  desire  for 
the  good  for  another,  and  not  for  oneself.  And  as  soon 
as  this  will  be  love  indeed,  that  is  a  desire  for  the  good 
for  her,  there  will  be  destroyed  in  it  everything  which  in 
this  sentiment  is  painful  for  you  and  for  her. 

Love  cannot  be  harmful,  so  long  as  it  is  love,  and  not 
the  wolf  of  egotism  in  the  sheepskin  of  love.  One  needs 
but  ask  oneself :  "  Am  I  prepared  for  his,  or  her,  good 
never  to  see  him,  or  her,  and  to  break  my  relations  with 
him,  or  her  ? "     If  not,  it  is  the  wolf,  and  he  has  to  be 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  453 

beaten  and  killed.  I  know  your  religious  and  loving 
soul,  and  so  am  convinced  that  you  will  conquer  the  wolf, 
if  it  is  he. 

Yes,  it  is  impossible  to  love  all  alike.  And  it  is  a  great 
happiness  to  love  even  one  more  especially,  but  it  must 
be  to  love  him,  or  her,  and  not  oneself,  one's  own  enjoy- 
ment which  is  experienced  in  a  communion  with  him, 
or  her. 

I  have  often  thought  of  falling  in  love,  and  have  never 
been  able  to  find  a  place  and  meaning  for  it.  But  this 
place  and  meaning  is  very  clear  and  definite :  it  consists 
in  making  easier  the  struggle  of  passion  with  chastity. 
Falling  in  love  must  in  young  people,  who  are  unable  to 
abstain  in  complete  chastity,  precede  marriage  and  free 
young  people  in  their  most  critical  years,  from  sixteen 
years  until  twenty  and  more,  from  an  agonizing  struggle. 
That  is  the  place  of  falling  in  love.  But  when  it  invades 
the  lives  of  men  after  marriage  it  is  out  of  place  and 
detestable. 

There  is  a  dispute  as  to  whether  falling  in  love  is  good. 
For  me  the  solution  is  clear. 

If  a  man  already  lives  a  human,  spiritual  life,  falling 
in  love,  love,  marriage,  will  be  a  fall  for  him ;  he  will 
have  to  give  part  of  his  powers  to  his  wife,  his  family,  or 
even  the  object  of  his  enamourraent.  But  if  he  is  on  the 
animal  stage,  eating,  working,  serving,  writing,  playing, 
this  falling  in  love  will  be  for  him  an  uplifting,  as  it  is 
for  animals,  for  insects. 

I  do  not  think  that  you  need  any  friendship  with 
women,  especially  any  spiritual  communion  with  them.' 
Communion  with  them  is  only  then  good  and  joyful  when 
in  your  consciousness  you  in  no  way  distinguish  them 
from  other  men. 


454    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

What  you  need  most  of  all,  it  seems  to  me,  is  work, 
work  which  would  absorb  all  your  energies. 

I  took  a  liking  to  a  pamphlet  sent  me  lately  by  Mrs. 
Stockham  on  "  The  Creative  Life,"  as  she  calls  it.  She 
says  that  when  in  man  there  appears,  in  addition  to  his 
usual  functions,  the  sexual  need,  he  ought  to  know  that 
it  is  a  creative  need,  which  only  in  its  lowest  manifesta- 
tion is  expressed  in  sexual  passion ;  it  is  a  creative 
ability,  and  it  depends  on  the  will  and  endeavour,  stub- 
born endeavour  to  transfer  it  to  another,  a  physical,  or, 
best  of  all,  a  spiritual  activity. 

I  believe  that  it  is  indeed  the  power  which  takes  part 
in  the  work  of  God  and  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  upon  earth  ;  with  the  sexual  act  it  is  only  the 
transmission  to  others,  to  the  children,  of  the  possibility 
of  taking  part  in  the  work  of  God ;  with  continency  and 
the  direct  activity  of  the  service  of  God,  it  is  the  highest 
manifestation  of  life.  The  transition  is  difficult,  but  it  is 
possible  and  is  accomplished  by  hundreds  and  by  thousands 
of  men  in  our  very  sight. 

If  you  overcome  it,  it  is  well ;  if  you  do  not  overcome 
it,  get  married,  —  it  will  not  be  so  good,  but  it  will  not 
be  bad. 

It  is  bad,  as  Paul  says,  to  burn,  bad  to  carry  around  this 
poison,  imbibing  it  with  the  whole  blood.  But  do  not 
believe  yourself  in  this,  that  there  is  something  good  and 
softening  in  cultivating  the  acquaintance  of  women.  All 
this  is  a  deception  of  lust.  In  the  friendship  with  women, 
as  in  that  with  men,  there  is  much  which  is  joyful,  but 
there  is  nothing  of  any  particular  joy  in  the  friendship 
with  women ;  but  what  there  is,  is  a  deception  of  sensu- 
ality, of  very  concealed  sensuality,  but  none  the  less  of 
sensuality. 

You  ask  what  means  there  is  for  struggling  with  pas- 
sion.    Among  the  minor  means,  such  as  work,  fasting, 


ON   THE    RELATION   BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    455 

the  most  effective  is  poverty,  the  lack  of  money,  the 
external  aspect  of  want,  a  position  in  which  it  is  evident 
that  you  cannot  be  attractive  to  any  woman.  But  the 
chief  and  only  means  which  I  know  is  the  uninterrupted- 
ness  of  the  strusrcrle,  the  consciousness  of  the  fact  that  the 
struggle  is  not  an  accidental,  temporary  condition,  but  a 
constant,  unchangeable  condition  of  hfe. 

You  ask  me  about  the  Eunuchs,  whether  the  opinion 
about  them  "is  just  that  they  are  bad  people,  and  whether 
the  Eunuchs  understand  correctly  the  Gospel,  Chapter 
XIX.  of  Matthew,  making  themselves  and  others  eunuchs 
on  the  basis  of  the  twelfth  verse  of  this  chapter. 

To  the  first  question,  my  answer  is  that  there  are  no 
bad  men,  and  that  all  men  are  the  cliildren  of  one  Father, 
and  all  are  brothers  and  equal,  —  nobody  is  better  or 
worse  than  anybody  else.  And  judging  from  what  I  have 
heard  about  the  Eunuchs,  they  live  morally  and  by  hard 
work.  To  the  second  question,  as  to  whether  they  under- 
stand correctly  the  Gospel,  making  themselves  and  others 
eunuchs  on  its  basis,  I  answer  with  full  confidence  that 
they  understand  the  Gospel  incorrectly  and,  in  making 
themselves,  and  especially  others,  eunuchs,  they  commit 
acts  which  are  in  direct  opposition  to  true  Christianity. 
Christ  preaches  chastity,  but  chastity,  like  any  virtue,  is 
of  value  only  when  it  is  attained  through  an  effort  of  the 
will  and  is  supported  by  faith,  and  not  when  it  is  attained 
by  the  impossibility  of  sinning.  It  is  the  same  as  though 
a  man,  for  fear  of  glutting  himself,  produced  in  himself  a 
disease  of  the  stomach,  or,  for  fear  of  fighting,  tied  his 
hands,  or,  for  fear  of  swearing,  cut  out  his  tongue.  God 
has  created  man  such  as  he  is ;  he  breathed  the  divine 
soul  into  the  carnal  body  in  order  that  this  soul  should 
vanquish  the  lusts  of  the  body  (in  this  does  all  the  life  of 
man  consist),  and  not  in  order  to  maim  his  body,  correcting 
God's  work. 


456  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

If  people  are  drawn  to  sexual  intercourse,  this  is  done 
for  the  purpose  that  the  perfection  which  one  generation 
has  not  reached  may  be  attained  by  the  next.  Wonderful 
in  this  respect  is  God's  wisdom  :  man  is  ordained  to  perfect 
himself,  —  "  Be  ye  as  perfect  as  your  Father  who  is  in 
heaven  is  perfect."  A  true  sign  of  perfection  is  found 
in  chastity,  true  chastity,  —  not  only  in  deeds,  but  also  in 
the  soul,  that  is,  in  a  full  liberation  from  sexual  passion. 
If  men  reached  perfection  and  became  chaste,  the  human 
race  would  come  to  an  end,  and  there  would  be  no  reason 
why  it  should  exist  upon  earth,  for  men  would  be  like 
angels,  who  do  not  marry  and  are  not  given  in  marriage, 
as  the  Gospel  says.  But  so  long  as  men  have  not  reached 
perfection  they  procreate  a  posterity,  and  this  posterity  is 
being  perfected  and  approaches  what  God  has  commanded 
it  to  attain,  and  comes  nearer  and  nearer  to  perfection. 
But  if  men  acted  as  do  the  Eunuchs,  the  human  race 
would  come  to  an  end,  and  would  never  attain  perfection, 
—  it  would  not  be  doing  God's  will. 

This  is  one  reason  why  I  consider  the  action  of  the 
Eunuchs  wrong  ;  another  is  this,  that  the  Gospel  teaching 
gives  the  good  to  men,  and  Christ  says,  "  My  yoke  is 
good,  and  my  burden  is  light,"  and  forbids  any  violence 
against  people ;  and  so  the  infliction  of  wounds  and 
sufferings,  even  though  not  upon  others  (which  is  an 
obvious  sin),  but  upon  oneself,  is  a  violation  of  the 
Christian  law. 

The  third  reason  is  this,  that  the  Eunuchs  obviously 
give  a  wrong  interpretation  to  verse  12  of  the  nineteenth 
chapter  of  Matthew.  The  whole  discourse  from  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  chapter  is  about  marriage, 
and  Christ  not  only  does  not  prohibit  marriage,  but  even 
prohibits  divorce,  that  is,  the  change  of  a  wife.  When 
his  disciples  (verse  10)  told  him  that  in  this  way  it  was 
very  hard  to  contain  oneself,  that  is,  to  get  along  with 
one  wife  only,  he  told  them  that,  although  not  all  persons 


ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    457 

were  able  to  contain  themselves,  as  those  contain  them- 
selves who  are  born  as  eunuchs,  or  those  who,  like  the 
eunuchs,  are  mutilated  by  men,  there  were  some  who 
made  themselves  eunuchs  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  that  is,  who  iu  spirit  vanquished  the  passion  in 
themselves,  and  that  it  was  necessary  to  be  like  them. 
That  under  the  words,  "  Such  as  made  themselves  eunuchs 
for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  it  is  necessary  to 
understand  the  spiritual  victory  over  the  flesh,  and  not 
the  physical  mutilation,  can  be  seen  from  the  fact  that 
where  it  speaks  of  the  physical  mutilation  it  says,  "  Were 
made  eunuchs  of  men,"  and  where  it  speaks  of  the  victory 
of  the  spirit  over  the  flesh,  it  says,  "  Made  themselves 
eunuchs." 

Thus  I  think,  and  thus  I  understand  verse  12,  but  I 
must  add  that  if  the  interpretation  of  the  letter  should 
seem  inconclusive  to  you,  aou  must  remember  that  it  is 
only  the  spirit  that  gives  life.  A  compulsory  or  even 
voluntary  mutilation  is  contrary  to  the  whole  spirit  of 
the  Christian  teaching. 

I  should  like  to  write  to  him  in  that  sense,  even  as  I 
understand  it,  that  the  bearing  of  children  in  marriage  is 
not  fornication ;  but  I  should  like  to  consider  it  better,  so 
as  to  write  with  greater  thoroughness,  because  there  is 
also  truth  in  the  opinion  that  carnal  intercourse,  even 
with  one's  own  wife,  for  the  sake  of  lust  alone,  is  sinful. 
I  think  that  self-mutilation  is  the  same  kind  of  a  sin  as 
carnal  intercourse  for  the  sake  of  lust,  just  as  I  think  that 
it  is  as  much  a  sin  to  gorge  oneself  as  to  starve  or  poison 
oneself.  Only  such  food  is  legitimate  for  the  body  as 
makes  it  possible  for  a  man  to  serve  others,  and  only  such 
carnal  intercourse  is  legitimate  as  perpetuates  the  human 
race. 

The  Eunuchs  are  right  when  they  say  that  cohabitation 
with  one's  wife,  if  it  takes  place  without  spiritual  love. 


45S  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

only  for  the  sake  of  lust,  and  so  not  in  proper  time,  is 
fornication ;  but  they  are  not  right  when  they  say  that 
intercourse  with  one's  wife  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
forth  children  and  in  spiritual  love  is  a  sin.  It  is  not  a 
sin,  but  God's  will. 

Mutilation  is,  in  my  opinion,  like  this.  Let  us  say  a 
man  was  living  intemperately  and  was  in  the  habit  of 
distilling  liquor  and  brewing  beer  out  of  his  grain,  and 
of  getting  intoxicated,  and  that  he  suddenly  felt  that  this 
was  bad  and  sinful,  and,  instead  of  giving  up  his  bad 
habit  and  learning  to  do  what  was  proper,  —  to  use  the 
grain  for  feeding  man  and  beast,  —  he  decided  that  there 
was  one  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  sin,  and  that  w^as,  to 
burn  his  grain,  aud  went  and  did  so.  What  w^ould  hap- 
pen would  be  this :  the  sin  would  still  remain  the  same 
in  him,  and  his  neighbours  would  still  proceed  brewing 
beer  and  distilling  liquor,  while  he  would  be  unable  to 
feed  himself,  or  his  family,  or  other  good  people. 

With  good  reason  Christ  praised  the  children  and  said 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  was  theirs  and  that  what  was 
hidden  from  the  wise  was  revealed  to  them.  We  know 
that  ourselves :  if  there  were  no  children,  if  children  were 
not  born  anew,  there  would  be  no  hope  for  the  kingdom 
of  God  upon  earth.  Only  in  them  is  all  the  hope.  We 
are  all  soiled,  and  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  be  cleansed,  but 
with  every  new  generation,  with  every  family,  there  come 
new  innocent  souls  that  may  remain  sucli.  The  river  is 
turbid  and  dirty,  but  many  clean  springs  fall  into  it,  and 
there  is  hope  that  the  water  will  become  purified. 

It  is  a  great  question,  and  I  am  glad  to  think  about  it. 
I  know  this  much  :  lustful  fornication  and  mutilation  are 
equally  bad  and  sinful.  But  the  second,  mutilation,  is 
worse.  In  fornication  there  is  no  pride,  but  there  is 
shame,  while  in  mutilation  people  have  no  shame,  and 
pride  themselves  on  this,  that  they  have  once  for  all 
violated  the  law  of  God  in  order  not  to  succumb  to  temp- 


ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    459 

tation  and  not  to  have  to  struggle.  It  is  necessary  to 
mutilate  the  heart  and  then  the  external  mutilation  will 
not  be  necessary,  for  external  mutilation  does  not  save 
one  from  temptation.  People  fall  into  this  deception 
because  it  is  altogether  impossible  to  destroy  in  the  heart 
the  lust  of  fornication  and  nothing  more,  it  is  necessary  to 
destroy  all  lust,  it  is  necessary  to  love  God  in  such  a  way 
as  to  despise  all  the  temptation  of  the  world,  and  that  is 
a  long  path  ;  but  here  it  is  as  though  one  could  by  a  short 
way  free  oneself  from  the  most  obvious  and  disgraceful 
sin,  and  the  trouble  is  that  by  this  short  cut  one  frequently 
arrives  nowhere  except  at  a  swamp. 

The  sexual  instinct  is  a  striving,  if  not  after  fulfilling 
the  whole  law,  at  least  after  securing  the  possibility  of 
its  fulfilment  to  one's  posterity.  The  truth  of  this  is  con- 
firmed in  separate  individuals:  the  more  a  man  approaches 
the  fulfilment  of  the  law,  the  more  he  turns  away  from 
sexual  lust,  and  vice  versa. 

Just  as  man,  together  with  other  animals,  submits  to 
the  law  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  so  he  submits, 
like  the  animals,  to  the  law  of  sexual  propagation ;  but 
man,  as  a  man,  finds  in  himself  another  law,  which  is 
contrary  to  the  struggle,  the  law  of  love,  and  the  law  of 
chastity,  which  is  contrary  to  sexual  intercourse  for  the 
sake  of  propagation. 

According  to  the  church  belief  there  is  to  be  an  end  of 
the  world ;  according  to  science  man's  life  on  earth,  and 
earth  itself,  are  to  come  to  the  same  end ;  what,  then,  is  it 
which  so  provokes  people  that  the  good  and  moral  life 
will  also  lead  to  the  end  of  the  human  race  ?  Maybe 
these  things  coincide.  In  the  statutes  of  the  Shakers  it 
says :  "  "V\Tiy  should  men  through  continence  not  free 
themselves  from  violent  death  ? "     Beautiful. 


iGO    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

There  is  a  calculation  by  Herschel  from  which  it  fol- 
lows that  if  humauity  doubled  every  fifty  years,  as  it  now 
does,  then,  if  we  count  seven  thousand  years  from  the  first 
pair,  there  would  have  been  l)y  this  time  so  many  people 
that,  if  they  were  placed  upon  each  other  over  the  whole 
earth,  this  pyramid  would  not  only  reach  up  to  the  sun, 
but  would  pass  the  distance  twenty-seven  times.  What 
deduction  do  we  make  from  this  ? 

There  are  only  two  deductions :  either  to  admit  and 
wish  for  plagues  and  wars,  or  to  strive  after  sexual  purity. 
Only  the  striving  after  purity  can  establish  the  balance. 

The  statistics  of  plagues  and  wars  and  celibacy  would 
be  interesting.  No  doubt  they  are  in  inverse  proportion, 
that  is,  the  less  destructive  conditions  there  are,  the  more 
there  are  celibates  :  one  balances  the  other. 

Another  deduction,  which  involuntarily  presents  itself 
and  which  I  am  still  unable  to  formulate  in  a  clear  man- 
ner, is  this,  that  mental  cares  and  calculations  about 
shortening  human  life  are  irregular.  Wliat  is  regular  is 
onlv  love;  and  love  is  never  alone,  but  is  connected  with 
purity.  Imagine  a  man  who  begets  other  men  and  at  the 
same  time  considers  cutting  their  lives  short ;  both  acts 
taken  together  are  senseless.  What  would  be  the  right 
thing  to  do  under  such  conditions  would  be  to  beget  one 
and  at  least  to  kill  one.  One  thing  is  rational :  Be  ye  as 
perfect  as  your  Father  is  perfect.  But  this  perfection  is 
in  purity  and  then  in  love. 

All  young  men  of  your  age,  who  live  under  the  condi- 
tions under  which  you  are  living,  are  in  a  very  danger- 
ous state.  The  damper  consists  in  this,  tbat  at  an  age 
when  habits  are  formed  which  will  remain  for  all  time, 
like  creases  in  the  paper,  you  live  without  any,  without 
any  moral  and  religious  restraint,  seeing  nothing  but 
those  unpleasantnesses  of  the  teaching,  which  are  im- 
posed upon  you  and  from  which  you  try  to  free  yourself 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  4Gl 

in  one  way  or  another,  and  those  most  varied  gratifications 
of  lust,  which  attract  you  on  all  sides  and  which  you  are 
able  to  satisfy.  Such  a  state  seems  to  you  quite  natural 
and  cannot  seem  otherwise,  and  you  are  not  at  all  to 
blame  because  it  appears  so  to  you,  for  you  grew  up  in  it, 
and  your  companions  are  in  the  same  condition,  —  but 
this  state  is  quite  exclusive  and  terribly  dangerous.  It  is 
terribly  dangerous  because,  if  you  are  to  place  the  whole 
aim  of  your  life  in  such  a  gratification,  as  it  is  with  you 
young  men,  when  these  lusts  are  new  and  especially 
strong,  then  it  is  bound  to  happen,  according  to  a  very 
well  known  and  indubitable  law,  that,  in  order  to  receive 
the  satisfaction  which  one  is  accustomed  to  receive  from 
the  gratification  of  the  appetites,  or  from  savoury  food, 
driving,  play,  attire,  music,  one  would  have  to  keep  add- 
ing objects  of  lust,  because  lust,  once  satisfied,  does  not 
furnish  that  enjoyment  a  second  and  a  third  time,  and 
one  has  to  gratify  new  and  stronger  lusts.  (There  even 
exists  a  law  from  which  we  know  that  enjoyment  in- 
creases in  an  arithmetical  progression,  while  the  means 
for  the  production  of  this  enjoyment  have  to  be  increased 
by  squares.) 

And  since  of  all  the  lusts  the  strongest  is  the  sexual, 
which  is  expressed  in  enamourment,  fondling,  onanism, 
and  cohabitation,  it  always  and  very  soon  arrives  at  this, 
which  is  always  one  and  the  same.  When  for  these 
enjoyments  can  no  longer  be  substituted  something  new, 
something  stronger,  there  begins  the  artificial  increase  of 
this  very  enjoyment  by  means  of  intoxicating  oneself  with 
wine,  tobacco,  and  sensuous  music.  This  is  such  a  usual 
path  that  upon  it  walk,  with  rare  exceptions,  all  young  men, 
both  rich  and  poor,  and  if  they  stop  in  time,  they  return 
to  real  life  more  or  less  crippled,  or  perish  altogether,  as 
hundreds  of  young  men  have  perished  in  my  sight. 

There  is  but  one  salvation  in  your  state  :  to  stop,  to 
come  to  your  senses,  to  look  about,  and  to  find  ideals  for 


462    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN"    THE    SEXES 

yourself,  that  is,  of  what  you  wish  to  be,  and  to  hve  in 
such  a  way  as  to  attain  that  which  you  wish  to  be. 

The  whole  matter  is  in  continence.  As  soon  as  people 
will  find  their  good  in  continence,  marriages  will  be 
moderated. 

A  man  will  never  succeed  in  getting  married  in  order 
to  live  more  happily.  To  set  marriage,  the  union  with 
whom  one  loves,  as  the  chief,  all-absorbing  aim  of  one's 
life,  is  a  great  error,  and  a  palpable  error,  if  you  reflect 
on  it.  The  aim  is  marriage.  Well,  you  are  married, 
what  then  ?  If  there  was  no  other  aim  before  marriage, 
it  will  be  very  difficult,  almost  impossible,  for  the  two  to 
find  it  later.  It  is  even  sure,  if  there  was  no  common 
aim  before  marriage,  that  you  will  under  no  condition 
come  together,  but  will  be  sure  to  separate.  Marriage 
gives  happiness  only  when  there  is  one  common  aim. 
People  meet  on  the  road,  and  say :  "  Let  us  go  together." 
"  Let  us  go,"  and  they  take  each  other's  hands ;  but  not 
when,  attracted  by  one  another,  they  get  off  the  road. 

All  this  is  so  because  equally  false  is  the  conception, 
shared  by  many,  that  life  is  a  valley  of  tears,  and  the 
other,  which  is  shared  by  a  vast  majority,  and  to  wliich 
you  are  inclined  by  youth  and  health  and  riches,  that 
life  is  a  place  of  enjoyment.  Life  is  a  place  of  service, 
where  one  has  frequently  to  endure  many  hardships,  but 
oftener  still  to  experience  very  many  joys.  But  there 
can  be  true  joys  only  when  men  themselves  understand 
their  life  as  service,  —  when  they  have  a  definite  aim  of 
life  which  is  outside  them,  outside  their  personal  happi- 
ness. People  who  get  married  generally  forget  this  com- 
pletely. There  are  to  be  so  many  happy  incidents  in 
marriage,  the  birth  of  children,  that,  it  seems,  these  inci- 
dents will  form  life  itself,  but  that  is  a  dangerous  decep- 
tion.    If  the  parents  live  on  and  bring  forth  children, 


ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    463 

without  haviug  any  aim  in  life,  they  will  only  defer  the 
question  of  the  aim  of  life  and  that  punishment  to  which 
men  are  subjected  who  live  without  knowing  for  what, — 
they  will  only  defer  it,  but  not  avoid  it,  because  they  will 
have  to  educate  and  guide  their  children,  and  there  is 
nothing  to  guide  by.  Then  the  parents  lose  their  human 
properties  and  the  happiness  which  is  connected  with 
them,  and  become  racial  beasts.  And  so  I  say  :  people 
who  are  preparing  themselves  to  get  married,  for  the  very 
reason  that  life  seems  full  to  them,  must  more  than  ever 
think  and  make  clear  to  themselves  in  the  name  of  what 
each  of  them  is  hving.  But,  in  order  to  make  this  clear 
to  yourself,  you  must  think  and  consider  the  conditions 
under  which  you  live,  and  your  past,  and  estimate  the 
value  of  everything  in  life,  —  what  you  consider  impor- 
tant, what  not  important,  what  you  believe  in ;  that 
is,  what  you  consider  as  an  eternal,  indubitable  truth, 
and  what  you  will  be  guided  by  in  life.  And  you  must 
not  only  find  that  out  and  make  it  clear  to  yourself,  but 
also  experience  it  in  fact  and  introduce  it  into  your  life, 
because,  so  long  as  you  do  not  do  what  you  believe  in, 
you  do  not  know  yourself  whether  you  believe  or  not. 
I  know  your  faith,  and  it  is  this  faith,  or  its  sides,  which 
find  their  expression  in  deeds,  that  you  must  more  than 
ever,  even  now,  make  clear  to  yourself,  by  putting  them 
into  execution.  The  faith  consists  in  believing  that  the 
good  is  in  loving  men  and  being  loved  by  them.  To 
obtain  it  I  know  three  activities  which  I  practise  all  the 
time,  which  one  cannot  practise  enough,  and  which  you 
need  now  more  especially.  The  first  thing  is,  in  order 
to  be  able  to  love  men  and  be  loved  by  them,  a  man  must 
accustom  himself  to  demand  as  httle  as  possible  of  them, 
because  if  I  demand  much,  I  have  many  privations ;  and 
if  I  have  many  privations,  I  am  inclined  to  reproach, 
and  not  to  love,  —  there  is  much  labour. 

The  second,  —  in  order  to  love  men  not  in  words,  but 


464  ON  TnE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

in  deeds,  a  man  must  teach  himself  to  do  what  is  useful 
to  men.  There  is  still  more  labour  here,  especially  for 
you  in  your  years,  when  it  is  proper  for  a  man  to  study. 

The  third,  —  in  order  to  love  men  and  be  loved  by 
them,  a  man  must  learn  meekness,  humility,  and  the  art  of 
enduring  disagreeable  people  and  unpleasantnesses,  —  the 
art  of  always  treating  them  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  grieve 
any  one,  and  in  case  of  being  unable  to  keep  from  causing 
them  grief,  of  being  able  to  choose  the  lesser  grief.  And 
here  there  is  even  more  work,  and  constant  work,  from 
wakening  until  falling  asleep.  And  it  is  most  joyous 
work,  because  day  after  day  you  rejoice  at  your  success 
in  it,  and,  besides,  receive  a  very  joyous,  though  at  first 
invisible,  reward  in  the  love  of  men. 

And  so  I  advise  you  to  think  and  live  as  seriously  as 
possible,  because  only  by  this  means  will  you  find  out 
whether  you  are  indeed  walking  on  the  same  road, 
and  whether  it  is  good  for  you  to  give  one  another 
your  hands,  or  not,  and  at  the  same  time,  if  you  are 
sincere,  to  prepare  the  future  for  yourself.  Your  aim 
in  life  ought  not  to  be  the  joy  of  marriage,  but  the  joy 
of  bringing  by  your  life  more  love  and  truth  into  the 
world.  Marriage  consists  even  in  this,  that  people  may 
aid  one  another  to  attain  this  aim.  Lcs  extremes  se  tou- 
chent.  The  most  egotistical  and  abominable  of  lives  is 
that  of  two  people  who  have  united  for  the  purpose  of 
enjoying  life,  and  the  highest  calling  is  that  of  men  who 
live  for  the  purpose  of  serving  God,  bringing  the  good 
into  the  world  and  who  have  united  for  it.  So  do  not 
get  entangled :  that's  it,  but  not  exactly  it.  Why  should 
a  man  not  choose  that  which  is  higher  ?  But  having 
chosen  the  highest,  a  man  has  to  put  his  whole  soul  into 
it,  —  with  a  little  there  will  be  no  results. 

One  should  by  no  means  marry  for  love,  but  by  all 
means  from  calculation  except  that  these  two  words  are 


ON"  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  465 

to  be  understood  in  the  opposite  sense  from  what  they 
are  generally  understood,  that  is,  one  should  marry,  not 
from  sensual  love,  but  from  calculation,  not  as  to  where 
and  by  what  to  live  (all  men  live),  but  as  to  how  probable 
it  is  that  the  future  wife  would  aid,  and  not  hinder  me  in 
my  living  a  human  life. 

Above  all,  think  twenty,  a  hundred  times  about  mar- 
riage. To  unite  one's  life  with  that  of  another  person  in  a 
sexual  union  is  for  a  moral,  sensitive  man  the  most  signif- 
icant act,  most  pregnant  with  consequences,  which  a  man 
can  perform.  One  must  always  marry  just  as  one  dies, 
that  is,  only  when  it  is  not  possible  to  do  otherwise. 

Next  to  death  in  importance,  and  next  to  death  in  time, 
there  is  nothing  more  important  and  irretrievable  than 
marriage.  And  just  as  death  is  good  only  when  it  is 
inevitable,  and  every  intentional  death  is  bad,  so  is  also 
marriage.     Marriage  is  no  evil  only  when  it  is  invincible. 

The  matter  of  marriage  is  in  itseK  not  so  simple  as  it 
seems.  Enamour  men  t  is  a  deviation  to  one  side,  but  cold 
calculation  is  a  still  worse  deviation  on  the  other  side. 
If,  as  you  say,  one  should  turn  to  the  first  girl,  that  is, 
one  should  not  choose  for  his  happiness,  then  it  is  neces- 
sary to  abandon  oneself  to  accident,  to  fate,  which  guides 
the  external  phenomena,  subordinating  one's  choice  to  the 
choice  of  oneself.  Sentiment  will  confuse  a  man,  but 
reason  will  confuse  one  even  more,  while  this  is  the  great- 
est thing  in  life.  In  my  opinion,  it  is  necessary,  as  in 
everything  in  life,  and  more  than  in  anything  else,  not 
to  set  to  onself  the  problem  of  getting  married,  but  to 
propound  the  one,  eternal  problem  of  how  to  live  well  and 
suffer  and  wait,  and  then  the  time  will  come  and  circum- 
stances will  make  it  impossible  not  to  get  married.  In  this 
wav  vou  will  be  more  certain  not  to  err  and  not  to  sin. 


466  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

Princess  Marya  Aleksy^evna's  judgment  about  marriage 
is  the  well-known  one :  "  If  young  men  marry  without 
sufficient  means,  —  there  will  come  children,  want,  —  they 
will  get  tired  of  one  another  in  a  year  or  two,  or  ten,  there 
will  be  quarrels,  misery,  hell."  In  all  this  Princess  Marya 
Aleksy^evna  is  quite  right,  and  predicts  correctly,  so  long 
as  these  marrying  people  have  not  another  sole  aim, 
which  is  unknown  to  Princess  Marya  Aleksydevna,  —  not  a 
mental  aim,  which  is  cognized  by  reason,  but  one  which 
forms  the  light  of  life,  the  attainment  of  which  agitates 
more  than  anything  else.  If  this  exists,  it  is  well,  and 
Princess  Marya  Aleksy^evna  will  be  fooled.  If  this  does 
not  exist,  there  are  ninety-nine  chances  out  of  a  hundred 
that  nothing  will  come  of  the  marriage  but  unhappiness. 

People  who  marry  Hke  that  present  themselves  to  me 
like  people  who  fall  without  stumbling.  If  you  have 
fallen,  what  is  to  be  done  ?  And  if  you  have  not  stumbled, 
what  sense  is  there  in  falling  intentionally  ? 

There  are  two  things  that  bind  you,  —  your  convictions, 
—  faith  and  love.  In  my  opinion  one  is  enough.  The 
real,  true  union  is  human,  Christian  love ;  if  this  shall 
exist,  and  upon  it  shall  grow  up  love,  enamourment,  it 
is  well  and  firm.  If  there  is  but  love,  enamourment,  it  is 
not  exactly  bad,  but  also  not  good,  —  still  it  is  possible. 
Honest  natures  can  with  great  struggles  live  through  it. 
But  •  if  neither  exists,  but  only  a  pretexte  of  one  or  the 
other,  it  is  certainly  bad.  A  man  has  to  be  as  severe  as 
possible  with  himself,  and  must  know  in  the  name  of 
what  he  is  acting. 


^o* 


Novels  end  by  the  marriage  of  the  hero  and  the  heroine. 
They  ought  to  begin  -with  this  and  end  with  their  unmarry- 
ing,  that  is,  becoming  free.  For  to  describe  the  lives  of 
men  in  such   a  way  as  to  break  off  the  description  at 


ON"   THE    RELATION    BETWEEN   THE    SEXES    467 

marriage,  is  the  same  as,  in  describing  a  man's  travels,  to 
break  off  in  the  place  where  the  traveller  has  fallen 
among  robbers. 

Yes,  in  the  Gospel  there  are  no  indications  of  marriage ; 
there  is  a  negation  of  it,  there  is  a  counteraction  to 
debauchery,  lust,  and  divorce  for  those  who  are  already 
in  marriage ;  but  of  the  institution  of  marriage,  in  the 
way  the  church  speaks  of  it,  there  is  not  even  any 
mention.  Nothing  but  the  insipid  miracle  at  Cana, 
which  confirms  marriage  to  the'same  extent  that  Zaccheus's 
visit  confirms  the  collection  of  tribute. 

Yes,  I  think  that  marriage  is  a  non-Christian  institution. 
Christ  never  married,  nor  did  His  disciples,  and  He  never 
established  marriage,  but,  when  He  turned  to  people,  of 
whom  some  were  married,  and  some  not.  He  told  the 
married  people  not  to  change  their  wives  through  divorce, 
as  could  be  done  according  to  the  law  of  Moses  (Matt. 
V.  32),  and  those  who  were  not  married.  He  told  to  refrain 
from  getting  married,  if  they  could  do  so  (Matt.  xix. 
10-12).  He  told  both  that  they  must  understand  that 
the  chief  sin  consists  in  looking  upon  woman  as  a  subject 
of  enjoyment  (Matt.  v.  28).  (Naturally,  the  saine  must 
be  understood  on  the  part  of  woman  in  relation  to  man.) 

From  this  proposition  naturally  result  the  following 
moral  deductions : 

1.  We  must  not  consider,  as  people  now  do,  that  every 
person,  man  or  woman,  must  by  all  means  enter  into 
wedlock ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  must  consider  that 
every  person,  man  or  woman,  ought  best  of  all  to  preserve 
his  or  her  purity,  so  that  nothing  may  interfere  with 
giving  all  the  strength  to  the  service  of  God. 

2.  We  must  not  look,  as  people  now  do,  on  the  fall  of 
man,  —  man  or  woman,  —  that  is,  on  the  entrance  into 
sexual  intercourse  as  on  an  error  which  may  be  mended 


468    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN"    THE    SEXES 

by  a  new  sexual  intercourse  (in  the  shape  of  marriage) 
with  another  person,  or  even  as  on  a  permissible  gratifica- 
tion of  a  need,  or  even  a  pleasure  ;  but  we  must  look  upon 
the  entrance  into  the  first  sexual  intercourse  of  any  one  with 
any  one  whatsoever  as  upon  an  entrance  into  inseverable 
marriage  (Matt.  xix.  4-6),  which  binds  the  conjugal  pair 
to  a  definite  activity  as  a  redemption  of  a  sin  committed, 

3.  We  must  not  look  upon  marriage,  as  they  do  now, 
as  upon  a  dispensation  to  gratify  carnal  lust,  but  as  upon 
a  sin  demanding  its  redemption. 

The  redemption  of  the  sin  consists,  —  in  the  first  place, 
in  the  liberation  of  self  from  lust,  the  conjugal  pair  help- 
ing one  another  in  this,  and  in  the  attainment,  as  far  as 
this  is  possible,  of  the  establishment  among  themselves  of 
the  relations,  not  of  lovers,  but  of  a  brother  and  sister; 
and,  in  the  second  place,  in  the  education  of  the  children, 
the  future  servants  of  God,  who  spring  from  marriage. 

The  difference  of  such  a  view  on  marriage  from  the 
existing  one  is  very  great :  people  will  marry  just  as  much 
as  ever,  and  just  as  much  will  parents  think  of  getting  their 
children  married,  but  the  great  difference  consists  in  this, 
as  to  when  the  gratification  of  the  lust  is  considered  per- 
missible and  legitimate  and  the  greatest  happiness  in  the 
world,  or  when  it  is  considered  a  sin.  Following  the 
Christian  teaching  a  man  will  marry  only  when  he  feels 
that  he  cannot  act  otherwise,  and  having  married  he  will 
not  abandon  himself  to  his  lust,  but  will  strive  to  subdue 
it  (both  man  and  woman) ;  the  parents,  caring  for  the 
spiritual  good  of  their  children,  will  not  consider  it 
necessary  to  get  all  married,  but  will  get  them  married, 
that  is,  will  counsel  the  fall,  or  make  it  easy  for  them, 
only  when  the  children  are  not  strong  enough  to  preserve 
their  purity,  and  only  when  it  shall  become  clear  that 
they  cannot  live  otherwise.  The  conjugal  pair  will  not 
desire,  as  they  do  now,  a  large  number  of  children, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  striving  after  purity  of  life,  will 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  469 

be  glad  that  they  have  but  few  children,  and  are  able  to 
devote  all  their  strength  to  the  education  of  those  of  their 
children  whom  they  have  already,  and  to  those  children 
of  others  whom  they  can  serve,  if  they  wish  to  serve 
God  with  the  education  of  future   servants  of  God. 

The  difference  will  be  the  same  that  exists  between 
men  who  partake  of  food  because  they  cannot  get  along 
without  it,  and  so  try  to  lose  as  little  time  and  attention 
as  possible  on  the  preparation  and  consumption  of  the 
food,  and  those  who  place  the  chief  interest  of  life  in 
the  invention,  adaptation,  and  increase  of  savouriness  and 
in  the  consumDtion  of  the  food,  which  the  Eomans  carried 

J.  ' 

to  the  highest  degree,  when  they  took  emetics  ^  in  order  to 
be  able  to  eat  again. 

The  first  thing  I  have  to  say  about  this  is  this,  that  I, 
in  speaking  of  the  manner  in  which  the  married  pair 
ought  to  Hve,  not  only  do  not  hint  at  having  lived  or 
living  myself  as  I  ought  to,  but,  on  the  contrary,  know 
from  my  own  hard  knocks  how  T  ought  to  have  lived 
only  because  I  have  not  lived  properly. 

I  do  not  take  back  anything  I  have  said ;  on  the  con- 
trary, I  should  try  to  say  more  strongly  all  I  have  said, 
but  in  reality  I  have  to  give  an  explanation.  I  must  do 
so,  because  we  are  in  our  lives  so  far  from  what  we  ought 
to  be  in  conformity  with  our  consciences  and  with  Christ's 
teaching,  that  the  truth  in  this  respect  startles  us  as 
much  (I  know  this  from  experience),  as  a  provincial  mer- 
chant who  is  growing  rich  would  be  startled  by  the  hint 
that  he  ought  not  to  lay  by  for  his  family  and  for  church 
bells,  but  ought  to  give  away  everything  he  has,  if  he 
wishes  to  be  freed  from  evil. 

You  say  :  "  Do  not  sleep  together."  Of  course  not.  I 
have  thought  of  it  myself.  I  will  write  about  it  every- 
thing that  I  think  of  it,  just  as  it  occurs  to  me. 

1  Precisely  the  same  is  doue  in  our  country  in  order  to  prevent  the 
birth  of  children.  —  Author's  Note. 


470    ON"    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

There  is  the  sentiment  of  enamourment,  most  power- 
ful in  man,  which  has  its  inception  between  two  persons 
of  the  opposite  sex  who  did  not  know  one  another,  and 
which  leads  to  marriage ;  marriage  has  immediately  a 
child  for  its  consequence.  There  begins  pregnancy  and 
in  consequence  of  it  a  sexual  indifference  of  the  conjugal 
pair  toward  one  another,  an  indifference  which  would  be 
very  perceptible,  and  would  interrupt  the  carnal  inter- 
course, as  it  is  interrupted  in  the  case  of  the  animals,  if 
men  did  not  consider  the  carnal  intercourse  a  legitimate 
enjoyment.  Such  an  indifference,  which  gives  way  to  the 
care  respecting  the  growth  and  the  nursing  of  the  child, 
continues  to  the  child's  weaning,  and  in  a  good  marriage 
(in  this  does  the  difference  of  man  from  the  animal  exist) 
there  begins  again,  with  the  weaning  of  the  child,  the 
feeling  of  enamourment  between  the  same  conjugal  pair. 

No  matter  how  far  we  may  be  from  it,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  it  ought  to  be  so,  and  for  these  reasons : 

In  the  first  place,  sexual  intercourse  at  a  time  when 
woman  is  not  prepared  for  bearing  children,  that  is,  when 
she  has  no  menses,  has  no  rational  meaning  and  is  noth- 
ing but  carnal  enjoyment  and  a  very  bad  and  disgraceful 
enjoyment,  as  every  conscientious  man  knows,  which  re- 
sembles the  most  heinows  and  unnatural  sexual  excesses. 
A  man  who  abandons  himself  to  it  becomes  more  irra- 
tional than  an  animal,  that  is,  he  uses  his  reason  for  the 
purpose  of  departing  from  the  law  of  reason. 

In  the  second  place,  all  know  and  agree  to  it,  that 
sexual  intercourse  weakens  and  exhausts  a  man,  and 
weakens  him  in  the  most  essentially  human  activity, — 
in  his  spiritual  activity.  "  Moderation,"  the  defenders  of 
the  present  order  will  say,  but  there  can  be  no  moderation, 
the  moment  there  is  a  transgression  of  the  laws  estab- 
lished by  reason.  But  the  harm  of  the  excess  (and  inter- 
course outside  the  free  period  is  an  excess)  may  for  a  man 
not  be  great  with  moderation  (it  is  disgusting  even  to 


ON"   THE    RELATION"    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    471 

pronounce  this  word  in  relation  to  such  a  subject),  if  he 
knows  one  woman  ;  but  what  will  be  moderation  for  the 
man  will  be  a  terrible  immoderation  for  the  woman  who 
is  in  the  period  of  pregnancy  or  nursing. 

I  think  that  the  backwardness  of  women  and  their  hys- 
terical condition  are  for  the  most  part  due  to  this.  It  is 
from  this  that  woman  ought  to  be  freed,  in  order  that  she 
may  become  one  body  with  her  husband,  and  the  servant, 
not  of  the  devil,  which  she  now  is,  but  of  God.  The 
ideal  is  remote,  but  great.  Why  should  we  not  strive 
after  it  ? 

I  imagine  that  marriage  ought  to  be  like  this :  the  pair 
cohabit  carnally  under  the  invincible  pressure  of  amorous- 
ness, the  child  is  conceived,  and  the  conjugal  pair,  avoid- 
ing everything  which  for  her  may  impair  the  growth  or  the 
nutrition  of  the  child,  avoiding  every  carnal  temptation, 
and  not  evoking  it,  as  is  done  nowadays,  live  together  as 
brother  and  sister. 

As  it  now  is,  the  man,  who  was  debauched  before, 
transfers  his  methods  of  debauchery  to  his  wife,  infects 
her  with  the  same  sensuality,  and  imposes  upon  her  the 
intolerable  burden  of  being  at  the  same  time  a  sweetheart, 
an  exhausted  mother,  and  a  sickly,  hysterical  person. 
And  the  husband  loves  her  as  a  sweetheart,  ignores  her 
as  a  mother,  and  despises  her  for  her  irritabihty  and  hys- 
teria, which  he  himself  induces  in  her.  It  seems  to  me 
that  in  this  is  to  be  found  the  key  to  all  the  sufferings 
which  in  an  enormous  majority  of  the  cases  is  liidden  in 
all  families. 

And  so  I  imagine  that  husband  and  wife  live  like 
brother  and  sister ;  she  bears  calmly,  nurses  without  im- 
pairment, and  with  this  grows  morally,  and  only  in  free 
periods  do  they  abandon  themselves  to  amorousness, 
which  lasts  some  weeks,  and  again  there  is  calm. 

I  imagine  that  this  amorousness  is  that  steam  pressure 
which  would  burst  the  boiler  if  the  safety-valve  did  not 


472    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

rise.  The  valve  opens  only  during  this  great  pressure, 
but  it  is  always  closed,  carefully  closed,  and  it  ought  to 
be  our  aim  consciously  to  close  it  as  tightly  as  possible, 
and  to  put  such  heavy  weights  on  it  that  it  may  not 
open.  In  this  sense  do  I  understand,  "  Who  can  contain, 
let  him  contain,"  that  is,  let  everybody  strive  never  to  get 
married,  and  having  married,  to  live  with  his  wife  as 
brother  and  sister.  But  the  steam  collects  and  opens  the 
valves ;  but  we  must  not  open  them  ourselves,  as  we  do 
when  we  look  on  sexual  intercourse  as  on  a  legitimate 
enjoyment.  It  is  lawful  only  when  we  cannot  abstain 
from  it,  and  when  it  bursts  forth  in  spite  of  our 
wish. 

How  are  we  to  determine  when  we  are  not  able  to 
abstain  from  it  ? 

How  many  such  questions  there  are,  and  how  insoluble 
they  seem,  whereas  how  simple  they  are  when  you  de- 
cide them  in  your  own  case  and  for  yourself  and  not  in 
the  case  of  others  and  for  otliers.  For  others  you  know 
only  a  certain  gradation  :  an  old  man  abandons  himself 
to  sexual  intercourse  with  a  prostitute,  —  that  is  dread- 
fully disgusting  ;  a  young  man  does  the  .same,  —  and  it  is 
less  disgusting.  An  old  man  sensually  caresses  his  wife, 
—  it  is  quite  disgusting,  but  less  so  than  in  the  case  of  a 
young  man  with  a  prostitute.  A  young  man  has  sensual 
relations  v/ith  his  wife,  —  it  is  still  less .  disgusting,  but 
none  the  less  disgusting.  Such  a  gradation  exists  for 
others,  and  all  of  us,  especially  uncorrupted  children  and 
young  people,  know  it  very  well ;  but  in  our  own  case 
there  exists  also  something  else:  every  man  who  has 
known  no  sexual  indulgence,  and  every  virgin,  has  the 
consciousness  (frequently  quite  bedimmed  by  false  con- 
ceptions) that  he  or  she  must  guard  his  or  her  purity,  and 
the  desire  to  preserve  it,  and  sorrow  and  shame  at  its 
loss,  no  matter  under  what  conditions.  There  is  a  voice 
of  conscience  wliich  always  says  clearly  afterward  and  at 


ON"    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    473 

all  times  that  it  is  bad  and  shameful.  The  whole  matter 
is  in  the  consciousness,  in  the  comprehension. 

In  the  world  it  is  considered  that  it  is  very  good  to 
enjoy  love,  precisely  as  though  it  should  be  considered 
good  to  open  the  safety-valves  and  let  out  the  steam ; 
but  according  to  God's  law  it  is  good  to  hve  only  a 
true  life,  to  work  with  one's  talent  for  God,  that  is, 
to  love  men  and  their  souls,  and  among  them  first  the 
nearest,  —  one's  wife,  —  and  to  help  her  in  the  compre- 
hension of  the  truth,  and  not  to  strangle  her  abihty  of 
conceiving,  by  making  her  the  instrument  of  one's  enjoy- 
ment, that  is,  to  work  with  the  steam  and  to  use  aU 
efforts  in  order  that  it  may  not  all  escape  through  the 
safety-valves. 

"  But  in  this  way  the  human  race  will  come  to  an 
end."  In  the  first  place,  no  matter  how  strictly  we  may 
try  not  to  have  any  sexual  intercourse,  there  are  the 
safety-valves  so  long  as  they  are  needed,  and  —  there 
will  be  children.  Yes,  what  is  the  use  of  lying  ?  Do 
we,  while  defending  sexual  intercourse,  care  about  the 
perpetuation  of  the  race  ?  We  care  about  our  enjoyment, 
and  we  ought  to  say  so.  The  human  race  will  come  to 
an  end  ?  What  will  come  to  an  end  will  be  the  animal 
man.  What  a  misfortune  !  Antediluvian  animals  have 
been  extinguished,  and  so  the  animal  man  wiU  certainly 
be  extinguished  (to  judge  from  appearances  in  space 
and  time).  Let  it  come  to  an  end.  I  am  as  little  sorry 
for  this  two-legged  animal  as  for  the  ichthyosauri,  and 
so  forth ;  all  I  care  for  is  that  the  true  life,  the  love  of 
the  beings  capable  of  love,  should  not  be  extinguished. 
But  this  will  not  only  not  come  to  an  end  if  the  human 
race  shall  come  to  an  end,  because  men  will  out  of  love 
renounce  the  pleasures  of  lust,  but  it  will  be  multiplied 
an  endless  number  of  times ;  this  love  will  increase  so 
much  and  the  beings  that  experience  it  will  become  such 
that  the  continuation  of  the  human  race  will  not  be 


474    ON    THE    RELATIOIir   BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

necessary  for  them.  Carnal  love  is  necessary  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  there  should  be  no  interruption  of 
the  possibility  of  working  out  such  beings  from  men. 

The  animals  abandon  themselves  to  sexual  intercourse 
only  when  the  progeny  can  be  born.  Unenlightened 
men,  such  as  we  all  are,  are  ready  for  it  at  all  times  and 
have  even  invented  the  statement  that  this  is  a  necessity. 
Through  this  invented  necessity  the  activity  of  the  mis- 
tress ruins  the  woman,  by  compelhng  her  to  do  unnatural 
work,  which  is  above  her  strength,  during  the  time  while 
she  is  pregnant  or  nursing.  With  this  demand  we  have 
ourselves  ruined  this  rational  nature  in  woman,  and  then 
we  complain  of  her  irrationality,  or  develop  it  with  books 
and  university  courses.  Yes,  in  everything  animal,  man 
has  still  consciously  to  come  up  to  the  animal,  and  this 
takes  place  of  itself  when  the  comprehension  begins  to 
live,  for  otherwise  the  activity  of  the  reason  is  directed 
only  to  the  distortion  of  the  animal  life. 

The  question  of  the  sexual  relations  between  husband 
and  wife,  to  what  extent  they  are  legitimate,  is  one  of 
tlie  most  important  practical  Christian  questions,  some- 
thing like  the  question  of  property,  and  never  ceases 
to  interest  me.  And,  as  always,  this  question  is  solved 
in  the  Gospel,  and,  as  always,  our  life  has  been  so 
remote  from  the  solution  which  Christ  has  given  that 
we  have  been  unable  not  only  to  apply  the  Christian 
solution,  but  even  to  comprehend  it.  Matt.  xix.  11, 
12  :  But  he  said  unto  them.  All  men  cannot  receive 
the  saying,  save  they  to  whom  it  is  given.  For  there 
are  some  eunuchs,  which  were  so  born  from  their  moth- 
er's womb :  and  there  are  some  eunuchs,  which  were 
made  eunuchs  of  men :  and  there  be  eunuchs,  which  have 
made  themselves  eunuchs  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's 
sake.     He  that  is  able  to  receive  it,  let  him  receive  it. 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  475 

Tliis  passage,  which  has  been  conjmented  upon  so  fre- 
quently and  so  falsely,  means  nothing  but  this,  that,  if 
a  man  asks  what  he  is  to  do  in  relation  to  the  sexual 
feeling,  what  to  strive  after,  wherein,  in  our  language, 
man's  ideal  is  to  consist,  —  he  answers :  to  become  a 
eunuch  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  And  he 
who  will  attain  this  will  attain  the  highest ;  and  he  who 
will  not  attain  it  will  fare  well  for  having  striven  after  it. 
He  who  can  receive,  let  him  receive. 

I  think  that  for  man's  good,  man  and  woman  ought 
to  strive  after  complete  \-irginity,  and  then  man  will  be 
what  he  ought  to  be.  We  must  aim  beyond  the  goal, 
in  order  to  reach  the  goal.  But  if  man  consciously 
strives,  as  is  the  case  among  us,  after  sexual  intercourse, 
even  though  in  marriage,  he  will  inevitably  fall  into  what 
is  contrary  to  the  law,  into  debauchery.  If  a  man  con- 
sciously strives  to  live,  not  for  the  belly,  but  for  the 
spirit,  his  relation  to  food  will  be  such  as  it  ought  to  be. 
But  if  a  man  in  advance  prepares  savoury  dinners  for 
himseK,  he  will  inevitably  fall  into  lawlessness  and 
debauchery. 

I  have  thought  a  great  deal  about  the  marital  life,  — 
and,  as  has  always  been  the  case  with  me,  whenever  I 
begin  to  think  seriously,  I  am  urged  on  and  helped  from 
without.  The  other  day  I  received  from  America  a  book 
by  a  woman  doctor  (she  had  ^vritten  to  me),  Stockham, 
under  the  title  of  "  Tokology."  The  book  is  in  general  ex- 
cellent from  a  hygienic  standpoint,  but,  above  all,  in  one 
chapter  it  treats  the  very  subject  about  which  we  have 
been  corresponding,  and  which,  of  course,  solves  the 
question  in  the  same  way  as  you  and  I  do.  It  is  a  pleas- 
ure to  see  that  the  question  has  long  ago  been  raised,  and 
that  the  scientific  authorities  are  deciding  it  in  the  same 
sense.  It  is  an  immense  pleasure  to  find  yourself  in  the 
darkness  and  to  see  a  light  far  ahead  of  you.     With  my 


47G    ON    THE    RELATION    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES 

egoism  it  makes  me  sad  to  thiuk  that  I  have  passed 
all  my  life  in  a  beastly  way  and  that  I  no  longer  can 
mend  my  life,  particularly  sad,  because  people  will  say  : 
"  It  is  all  very  well  for  you,  a  decaying  old  man,  to 
say  this,  but  you  did  not  live  accordingly.  Wlien  we 
get  old,  we  shall  be  speaking  in  the  same  manner."  This  is 
where  the  chief  punishment  for  sins  lies  :  you  feel  that  you 
are  an  unworthy  instrument  for  the  transmission  of  God's 
will,  an  instrument  that  is  spoiled  and  soiled.  But  there 
is  the  consolation  that  others  will  be  such.  May  God 
help  you  and  the  others. 

I  have  been  thinking,  among  other  things,  for  the 
epilogue  :  Marriage  was  formerly  the  acquisition  of  a  wife 
for  the  purpose  of  possessing  her.  Again,  the  relation 
to  woman  was  established  by  war,  by  captivity.  Man 
arranged  for  himself  the  possibility  of  his  lust,  without 
thinking  of  woman,  —  the  harem.  Monogamy  changed 
the  number  of  wives,  but  not  the  relation  to  her.  The 
true  relation  is  quite  the  opposite.  A  man  can  always 
have  a  woman  and  can  always  contain  himself;  but  a 
woman  (especially  one  who  has  known  a  man)  can  with 
much  greater  difficulty  contain  herself  when  she  may 
have  intercourse,  which  happens  with  her  once  in  two 
years.  And  so,  if  there  is  any  one  who  can  ask  for 
gratification,  it  is  by  no  means  the  man,  but  the  woman. 
The  woman  may  demand  this,  because  for  her  it  is  not  a 
Genuss,  as  for  man,  but,  on  the  contrary,  because  she 
gives  herself  up  with  pain,  and  expects  pain,  —  pain,  and 
suffering,  and  cares.  It  seems  that  marriage  ought  to  be 
formulated  like  this :  Man  and  woman  come  together, 
loving  one  another  spiritually,  and  both  promise  one 
another  that  if  they  shall  have  children,  they  will 
have  them  of  one  another.  But  the  demand  for  sexual 
intercourse  ought  to  come  from  her,  and  not  from 
him. 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  477 

I  think,  in  the  first  place,  that  you  judge  quite  in- 
correctly when  you  say  that  you  must  not  turn  to  the 
father  of  your  children  (you  write :  "  I  will  not,  and  I 
cannot ").  The  union  between  a  man  and  a  woman  from 
whom  children  were  born  is  insoluble,  independently  of 
whether  it  is  sanctified  in  an  external  manner,  by  ecclesi- 
astic marriage.  And  so  I  think  that,  no  matter  who  the 
father  of  your  children  may  be,  whether  he  be  married  or 
single,  rich  or  poor,  bad  or  good,  whether  he  has  offended 
you  or  not,  you  must  turn  to  him  and  point  out  to  him,  if 
he  has  neglected  it,  his  duty  to  serve  his  children  and 
their  mother  with  his  life.  If  he  should  answer  to  this 
not  only  with  indifference,  but  also  with  contempt  and 
insult,  you  are  none  the  less  obliged  before  God,  before 
yourself,  before  your  children,  and,  above  all,  before  him, 
to  turn  to  him,  to  remind  him,  to  beg  him  for  his  own 
sake  to  do  his  duty,  —  to  ask  him  meekly,  lovingly,  but 
persistently,  as  the  widow  of  the  Gospel  begged  the  judge. 
This  is  my  well-considered  and  sincere  opinion  ;  you  may 
leave  it  without  attention  or  follow  it.  But  I  have  felt  it 
to  be  my  duty  to  tell  it  to  you. 

The  physical  connection  with  the  accidental  husband  is 
one  of  the  means  established  by  God  for  the  dissemination 
of  his  truth  :  for  the  trial  and  confirmation  of  the  stronger 
and  the  enlightenment  of  the  weaker. 

In  the  Bible  and  the  Gospel  it  says  that  man  and  wife 
are  not  two  beings,  but  one,  and  this  is  true,  not  because 
it  was  supposedly  said  by  God,  but  because  it  is  a 
confirmation  of  the  undoubted  truth  that  the  sexual 
intercourse  of  two  beings,  which  has  childbirth  for  its 
consequence,  unites  these  two  beings  in  some  mysterious 
manner,  which  is  distinct  from  any  other  union,  so  that 
these  two  in  a  certain  way  cease  to  be  two  and  become 
one  being. 


478  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

And  so  I  think  that  the  striving  after  chastity,  after 
the  cessation  of  such  relations,  can  and  must  be  accom- 
pHshed  by  this  united  being,  that  is,  by  both  the  husband 
and  the  wife  together,  and  the  one  who  is  in  advance  in 
this  relation  must  try  and  influence  the  other  with  all 
means  at  command,  —  with  simplicity  of  life,  with  ex- 
ample, with  conviction.  So  long  as  they  have  not  met 
in  one  desire,  they  must  bear  together  the  burden  of  the 
sins  of  their  united  being. 

In  matters  of  our  passions  we  certainly  do  things  which 
are  contrary  and  repulsive  to  our  conscience ;  even  so  we 
have  to  do  deeds  which  are  contrary  to  our  conscience,  if 
only  we  do  not  regard  ourselves  as  separate  beings,  but  as 
parts  of  the  united  beings  of  the  conjugal  pair.  The  only 
point  is,  as  in  one's  persoual  temptations,  so  also  in  tlie 
temptation  of  this  united  being,  not  for  a  moment  to  fail 
to  recognize  the  sin  as  a  sin,  —  to  cease  fighting. 

You  are  right  when  you  say  that  there  are  obligations 
to  oneself,  the  image  and  likeness  of  God,  and  a  man 
cannot  and  must  not  admit  a  defilement  of  his  body  ;  but 
this  does  not  refer  to  those  marital  relations  from  which 
there  have  been  and  can  be  children.  The  bringing  forth 
of  children  and  their  education  and  nursing  destroy  the 
greater  part  of  the  weight  and  criminality  of  these  rela- 
tions and,  besides,  for  the  long  period  of  pregnancy  and 
nursing  frees  from  them. 

It  is  not  our  business  to  discuss  whether  the  bringing 
forth  of  children  is  good  or  not.  He  who  established  this 
redemption  for  the  sin  of  violating  chastity  knew  what  he 
was  doing. 

Forgive  me  if  what  I  shall  say  shall  offend  you :  In 
what  you  say  that  bearing  children  one  becomes  more 
and  more  nervous,  there  is  expressed  an  evil,  coarsely 
egotistical  trait.  You  do  not  live  in  order  to  be  merry 
and  healthy,  but  in  order  to  do  the  w^ork  for  which  you 
were  appointed.     Now  this  business  consists,  in  addition 


ON    THE    KELATIOlSr    BETWEEN    THE    SEXES    479 

to  all  tlie  most  important  affairs  of  your  inner  life,  —  if 
you  are  ahead  of  your  husband  in  the  matter  of  chastity,  — 
in  helping  him  advance  on  this  path,  and,  if  you  yourself 
have  not  fulfilled  everything  demanded  of  you,  in  giving 
to  the  world  other  beings  who  will  be  able  to  fulfil  it. 

Besides,  if  certain  relations  exist  between  husband  and 
wife,  both  of  them  invariably  take  part  in  it.  If  one  of 
them  is  more  passionate,  it  seems  to  the  other  that  he 
or  she  is  absolutely  chaste  ;  but  this  is  not  true. 

I  think  it  is  not  true  even  in  your  case.  You  merely 
do  not  see  your  sin  behind  the  more  noticeable  sin  of 
some  one  else.  If  you  were  absolutely  pure  in  this  respect, 
you  would  be  indifferent  to  where  your  husband  is  going 
to  find  a  gratification  of  his  passion,  —  indifferent  in  the 
sense  of  jealousy,  and  would  only  pity  him  for  his  fall ; 
but  this  is  not  the  case. 

If  you  were  to  ask  practical  advice  of  me,  I  should 
say :  Choose  the  best  minute  of  a  pure  mood  of  love  in 
your  husband,  and  tell  him  how  hard  and  painful  these 
relations  are  to  you,  and  how  passionately  you  wish  to  be 
freed  from  them.  If,  as  you  write,  he  does  not  agree 
with  you  that  chastity  is  good,  and  wiU  insist,  —  submit, 
and,  if  you  shall  be  pregnant,  which  you  ought  to  wish, 
demand  your  full  freedom  during  the  time  of  pregnancy 
and  nursing.  And  again  do  the  same,  and  do  not  trouble 
yourself  as  to  what  will  come  of  it. 

Nothing  but  good  can  come  from  it,  for  you,  and  for  your 
husband,  and  for  your  children,  because,  by  acting  in  this 
manner,  you  will  be  seeking,  not  your  happiness  and 
peace,  but  the  fulfilment  of  what  God  wants  of  you. 

Forgive  me  if  I  have  not  written  well ;  I  tried  before 
Grod  to  give  utterance  to  what  I  have  experienced  and 
thought  concerning  this  question. 

Oppressive  relations  with  one's  wife  (or  husband)  can  be 
untied  only  by  a  meek  life,  just  as  a  knot  can  be  untied 


480  ON   THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

only  by  submissively  following  with  the  whole  skein  after 
the  thread. 

Believe  me  that  there  are  no  external  conditions  which, 
are  good  in  themselves,  and  a  senseless  man  who  is  mar- 
ried to  an  angel,  and  another  who  is  married  to  a  devil,  is 
equally  dissatisfied,  and  that  many,  not  only  many,  but 
nearly  all  who  are  dissatisfied  with  their  marital  state 
(they  are  all  of  them  dissatisfied)  think  that  there  can 
be  nothing  worse  than  their  situation.  Consequently  it  is 
all  the  same  with  everybody. 

If  you  look  upon  woman  as  an  object  of  enjoyment, 
even  if  it  were  your  own  wife,  —  so  much  the  worse  if 
she  is  your  wife,  —  you  are  committing  adultery  and  are 
sinning.  With  the  fulfilment  of  the  law  of  bread  labour, 
cohabitation  has  the  aim  of  impersonal  enjoyment,  of  an 
aid,  a  continuator ;  but  with  superabundance, —  that  of 
debauchery. 

The  gardener's  wife  has  again  had  a  child,  and  again 
there  came  an  old  woman  and  took  the  baby  away  some- 
where. 

All  are  terribly  agitated.  The  use  of  means  for  pre- 
venting birth  is  nothing,  but  for  this  there  are  not  suffi- 
cient condemnatory  words. 

It  was  learned  to-day  that  the  old  midwife  has  re- 
turned and  has  brought  the  child  back.  On  the  road  the 
midwife  came  across  others  who  were  taking  with  them 
just  such  children.  One  of  these  children  was  given  the 
nipple  too  far  down  into  the  mouth.  It  pulled  it  in,  and 
strangled.  In  one  day  they  brought  twenty-five  children 
to  Moscow.  Of  these  twenty-five,  nine  were  not  ac- 
cepted, because  they  were  legitimate  or  sick. 

N went  in  the  morning  to  admonish  the  gardener's 

wife.     The  gardener's  wife  warmly  defended  her  husband, 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  481 

saying  that  with  their  poverty  and  indefiniteness  of  life 
she  could  not  have  any  children.  Her  breast  even  does 
not  fill  up.     In  short,  it  is  inconvenient  for  her.  .  .  . 

Just  before  that  I  was  swinging  three  waifs,  and  I 
came  across  another  boy,  Vasya's  nephews.  Altogether 
there  is  a  swarm  of  this  brood  of  children.  They  are  born 
and  they  grow  up  to  become  drunkards,  syphilitics,  sav- 
ages. 

And  with  all  this  they  talk  of  the  salvation  of  the  lives 
of  men  and  children  and  of  their  destruction.  What  is 
the  sense  of  breeding  savages  ?  What  good  is  there  in  this  ? 
They  ought  not  to  be  killed,  nor  ought  people  to  stop 
breeding  them,  but  they  ought  to  employ  all  their  forces 
in  order,  to  make  men  out  of  the  savages.  This  is  the 
only  good.  But  this  deed  is  not  done  with  words  alone, 
but  with  the  example  of  life. 

If  you  have  fallen,  know  that  there  is  no  other  redemp- 
tion of  this  sin  than  (1)  freeing  both  yourselves  from  the 
offence  of  the  lust  and  (2)  bringing  up  the  children  as 
servants  of  God.    . 

Be  both  of  you  (husband  and  wife)  careful  and,  more 
than  anything,  attentive  to  your  mutual  relations,  so  that 
the  habits  of  irritation  and  alienation  may  not  steal  in. 
It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  become  one  soul  and  one  body. 
We  must  try.  And  tbe  reward  for  the  endeavour  is 
great.  I  know  one  chief  means  for  this  :  amidst  your 
conjugal  love  do  not  for  a  moment  forget  or  lose  the  love 
and  respect  of  man  to  man.  Let  there  be  relations  of 
man  to  wife,  but  at  the  base  of  all  let  the  relations  be  as 
to  a  stranger,  a  near  friend,  —  this  is  the  chief  relation. 
In  them  is  the  power. 

Do  not  strengthen  your  attachment  for  one  another,  but 
with    all    your    strength    increase    the    caution    in    your 


482  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

relations,  the  alertness,  so  that  there  may  be  no  conflicts. 
That  is  a  terrible  habit.  With  no  one  are  there  such 
close  and  many-sided  relations  as  with  a  husband  or  wife, 
and  for  this  reason  we  always  forget  to  think  of  them,  to 
be  conscious  of  them,  just  as  we  cease  being  conscious  of 
our  body.     And  that  is  where  the  trouble  is. 

For  a  conjugal  pair  to  be  happy,  as  they  write  about 
happmess  in  novels,  and  as  every  human  heart  wishes  for 
it,  it  is  necessary  that  there  should  be  concord.  But  in 
order  that  there  should  be  concord,  it  is  necessary  for 
husband  and  wife  to  look  in  the  same  way  upou  the 
world  and  the  meaning  of  Hfe  (this  is  particularly  neces- 
sary in  relation  to  children).  But  that  husband  and  wife 
should  understand  life  alike,  should  stand  on  the  same 
level  of  comprehension,  will  happen  as  rarely  as  that  one 
leaf  of  a  tree  should  precisely  cover  another.  And  since 
this  does  not  exist,  the  only  possibility  of  concord,  and  so 
of  happiness,  consists  in  this,  that  one  of  the  two  should 
submit  his  or  her  comprehension  to  the  other. 

Here  lies  the  chief  difficulty  :  the  spouse  with  the  supe- 
rior comprehension  cannot,  in  spite  of  his  or  her  best  desire, 
surrender  it  to  the  inferior  comprehension.  It  is  possible 
for  the  attainment  of  concord  not  to  sleep,  not  to  eat,  to 
make  beds  for  flowers,  etc.,  but  it  is  impossible  to  do  that 
which  you  consider  wrong,  sinful,  not  only  irrational,  but 
directly  opposed  to  reason,  and  bad.  In  spite  of  all 
the  consciousness  that  the  happiness  of  both  depends  on 
concord,  that  this  concord  is  necessary  for  happiness  and 
for  the  correct  education  of  the  children,  a  wife  cannot 
contribute  to  her  husband's  intoxication  or  gambling,  and 
the  husband  cannot  contribute  to  his  wife's  balls  and  to 
teaching  his  children  dancing  and  fencing  and  religion 
according  to  Filar^t's  Catechism. 

For  the  observance  of  concord  and  not  only  of  happi- 
ness, but  also  of  the  true  good,  which  coincides  with  love 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  483 

and  union,  the  one  who  stands  on  the  lower  level  of  com- 
prehension and  feels  the  higher  comprehension  of  the 
other  must  submit,  and  not  only  submit  in  worldly,  prac- 
tical matters,  in  such  things  as  what  to  eat,  how  to  eat, 
how  to  dress,  how  to  hve,  but  must  also  submit  in  the 
direction  of  life,  in  the  aims  of  the  activity. 

If  it  should  turn  out  that  I  like  billiards,  or  the  races, 
or  my  ambition  more  than  my  children,  there  might  be 
place  for  reproaches ;  or  if  it  should  turn  out  that  I  am 
a  coward  and  am  afraid  to  go  against  the  existing  order, 
lest  my  peace  be  disturbed,  these -reproaches  might  touch 
me.  But  if  I  love  God,  that  is,  the  good  and  truth,  I  cer- 
tainly love  my  children  in  the  best  way  possible  and  for 
them  do  the  very  best  I  can  do. 

For  happiness,  still  more,  for  the  true  good  of  the 
married  pair  and  of  the  children  who  live  with  them, 
and  for  the  good  of  all  their  near  friends,  the  concord 
of  the  spouses  is  indispensable ;  discord,  quarrels,  are 
a  misfortune  for  them,  for  the  children,  and  an  offence 
for  people,  a  most  terrible  hell.  That  this  may  not  be, 
but  one  thing  is  needed :  one  of  the  two  must  submit. 

It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  so  easy  and  such  a  joy 
for  that  one  of  the  marital  pair  to  submit  who  under- 
stands that  his  other  half  stands  higher,  understands 
something  not  quite  accessible  to  him  or  her,  but  some- 
thing that  is  good  and  divine,  —  one  always  feels  that,  — 
that  I  wonder  why  they  do  not  do  it. 

It  is  necessary  to  unite  serving  men  and  serving  the 
family,  not  by  distributing  the  time  mechanically  between 
this  and  that,  but  chemically,  by  adding  to  the  care  of  the 
family,  the  education  of  the  children,  an  ideal  meaning  in 
the  service  of  men.  Marriage,  true  marriage,  which  is 
manifested  in  the  birth  of  children,  is  in  its  true  signifi- 
cance only  a  mediate  service  of  God,  a  service  of  God 
through  the  children.     For  this  reason  marriage,  conjugal 


484:  ON  THE  RELATION"  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

love,  is  always  experienced  by  us  as  a  certain  alleviation 
and  pacification.  It  is  the  moment  of  the  transmission 
of  one's  work  to  another,  "  If  I  have  not  done  what 
I  could  and  should  have  done,  here  are  my  children  to 
take  my  place,  —  they  will  do  it." 

The  real  point  is  that  they  should  do  it  and  that  they 
should  be  educated  to  be,  not  a  hindrance  to  God's  works, 
but  His  labourers,  so  that,  if  I  was  unable  to  serve  the 
ideal  which  was  standing  before  me,  I  may  be  able  to  do 
everything  in  my  power  so  that  my  children  may  serve 
Him.  This  gives  the  whole  programme  and  the  whole 
charaeter  cf  the  education,  and  supplies  a  religious  signifi- 
cance to  education  ;  and  it  is  this  which  chemically  unites 
into  one  the  best,  self-sacrificing  tendencies  of  youth  and 
the  care  of  the  family. 

I  welcome  newly  arrived  Ivan.  Wlience  does  he  come  ? 
What  is  he  for  ?  Whither  is  he  going  ?  And  who  is  he  ? 
It  is  well  for  those  to  whom  the  protoplasm  forms  a  suffi- 
cient answer  to  these  questions ;  but  those  whom  this 
answer  does  not  satisfy  must  inevitably  believe  that  there 
is  a  deep  significance  in  Ivan's  appearance  and  life,  and 
that  we  shall  understand  this  significance  in  proportion 
as  we  shall  do  everything  we  must  in  relation  to  him,  — 
to  Ivan. 

Men  of  a  family  must  either  abandon  their  wives  and 
children,  —  and  this  cannot  be  done,  —  or  they  must  live 
in  a  settled  state.  This  wandering  must  be  painful  for 
the  wives  who  for  the  most  part  (I  hope  they  will  forgive 
me  this),  if  at  best  they  lead  a  Christian  life,  lead  it  not 
for  God,  but  for  their  husbands.  For  them,  the  poor 
women,  this  is  difficult.  And  so,  it  seems  to  me,  they 
should  be  taken  care  of  and  pitied.  Barely  has  some 
balance  established  itself  between  husband  and  wife,  and 
they  manage  to  get  on  their  legs,  when  there  comes  the 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  485 

difficulty  of  the  migration  and  of  the  new  establishment. 
It  is  above  their  strength,  and  every  building  which  is 
reared  with  labour  caves  in.  I  know,  you  will  say  that 
there  is  no  need  of  living  with  the  family :  Leave  your 
wife  and  cliildren,  as  Christ  has  said ;  but  I  beheve  that 
this  may  be  done  only  by  mutual  consent,  and  there  is 
another  saying  of  Christ,  and  one  which  is  more  obliga- 
tory :  Man  and  wife  are  not  twain,  but  one  flesh,  and  that 
those  whom  God  has  united  man  cannot  sever.  People 
like  you  and  other  happy  and  strong  men  must  not  get 
married,  but  if  they  have  married  and  have  children,  they 
must  not  violate  what  has  been  done,  must  not  wipe  out 
the  sin,  but  bear  its  consequences.  I  think  that  it  is 
a  great  sin  to  ask  or  advise  husbands  to  abandon  their 
wives.  It  is  true,  it  seems  that  God's  work  will  gain 
from  it,  that  without  a  wife  I  shall  do  a  great  deal  more 
than  now,  but  frequently  it  only  seems  so.  If  I  could  be 
absolutely  pure,  absolutely  without  sin,  it  would  be  so. 
We  must  not  ask  and  advise  this  for  this  other  reason, 
that  with  such  a  view  people  who  have  sinned,  that  is, 
married  people,  would  appear  to  themselves  and  to  others 
as  people  who  are  done  for,  and  that  is  not  good.  I  think 
that  sinners  and  weak  people  can  also  serve  God. 

Having  once  come  to  sin  through  marriage,  we  must 
bear  the  consequences  of  our  sin  in  the  best,  most  Chris- 
tian manner,  and  not  free  ourselves  from  it,  by  commit- 
ting a  new  sin,  and  we  must  in  this  situation  serve  God 
with  all  our  strength. 


"O" 


You  understand  the  words  of  the  Gospel,  Leave  father 
and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and  follow  me,  in  too 
literal  a  sense.  In  respect  to  the  meaning  of  these  words, 
—  especially  as  to  how  we  ought  to  solve  those  conflicts 
and  contradictions  which  take  place  between  domestic  ties 
and  the  demands  of  Christ,  that  is,  of  truth,  —  I  think 
that  the  solution  of  these  questions  cannot  be  from  with- 


486  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

out,  by  means  of  rules  and  prescriptions,  and  each  person 
solves  it  according  to  his  powers.  The  ideal,  of  course, 
always  remains  one  and  the  same,  and  is  expressed  in  the 
Gospel:  Leave  your  wife,  and  follow  me.  But  to  what 
extent  a  man  may  do  so,  that  only  he  and  God  know. 

You  ask  what  is  meant  by  the  words,  Leave  your  wife. 
Does  it  mean  to  go  away  from  her  or  to  stop  sleep- 
ing with  her  and  begetting  children  ?  Of  course,  "  to 
leave "  means  to  do  this,  that  your  wife  should  not  be 
as  a  wife,  but  as  any  other  woman,  as  a  sister.  In  this 
does  the  ideal  lie.  And  this  ought  to  be  done  in  such 
a  way  as  not  to  irritate  the  wife,  not  to  offend  her,  not  to 
subject  her  to  anger  and  to  temptation.  And  that  is  ter- 
ribly hard  to  do.  A  married  man  who  strives  after  the 
Christian  life  feels  within  his  heart  the  whole  difficulty 
of  healing  the  wound  which  he  himself  has  inflicted. 
This  one  thing  I  think  and  say  .  .  .  and  that  is,  being 
married,  one  should  strain  all  one's  life  and  all  one's 
forces  to  become  unmarried  without  increasing  the  sin. 

Yes,  Christ's  ideal  of  serving  the  Father  is  a  service 
which  first  of  all  excludes  the  care  both  of  life  and  of  the 
continuation  of  the  species.  So  far  an  attempt  at  renounc- 
ing these  cares  has  not  put  a  stop  to  the  human  race. 
What  will  happen  in  the  future,  I  do  not  know. 

I  do  not  like  to  speak  of  the  peculiarity  of  our  time, 
but,  in  the  relations  of  husbands  and  wives,  of  men  and 
.women,  amidst  the  rich  and  the  poor,  there  is  in  every 
country  something  peculiar.  Thus  the  relations  of  hus- 
bands and  wives,  it  seems  to  me,  are  spoiled  by  that 
spirit,  not  only  of  iusubmissiou,  but  even  of  animosity 
of  the  women  against  the  men,  of  rancour,  of  a  desire  to 
show  that  they  are  not  worse  than  the  men,  that  they 
can  do  the  same  as  the  men,  and  at  the  same  time  by  the 
absence  of  that  moral,  religious  feeling  which,  if  it  existed 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  487 

before  in  the  women,  is  replaced  by  the  maternal  feeling. 
I  believe  that  women  are  absolutely  equal  with  men,  but 
the  moment  they  marry  and  become  mothers,  there  natu- 
rally takes  place  a  division  of  labour  in  the  conjugal  pair. 
The  maternal  feelings  absorb  so  much  energy  that  there 
is  little  of  it  left  for  moral  guidance,  and  the  moral  guid- 
ance naturally  passes  over  to  the  husband.  So  it  has 
been  ever  since  we  have  known  the  world.  Now,  since 
this  natural  order  of  things  has  been  misused,  —  since 
the  guidance  of  man  has  been  asserted  through  rude  force, 
and  women  were  liberated  by  Christianity,  —  woman  has 
ceased  to  obey  man  from  fear,  or  to  delegate  to  him  the 
guidance  of  life  from  a  consciousness  that  it  is  better  so ; 
and  there  began  a  tangle  and  disorganization  of  life,  which 
is  noticeable  in  all  layers  of  society  and  under  all  condi- 
tions. 

The  mental  fashion  of  lauding  the  women,  of  asserting 
that  they  are  spiritually  not  only  equal,  but  even  supe- 
rior to  men,  is  a  very  bad  and  harmful  fashion.     . 

There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  this,  that  women  ought 
not  to  be  limited  in  their  rights,  that  we  must  treat  a 
woman  with  the  same  deference  and  love  as  men,  that 
she  is  legally  man's  equal ;  but  to  assert  that  the  average 
woman  is  endowed  with  the  same  spiritual  power  as  man, 
to  expect  to  find  in  every  woman  what  you  expect  to  find 
in  every  man,  means  intentionally  to  deceive  oneself,  and 
—  to  deceive  oneself  to  the  injury  of  woman. 

If  we  expect  from  woman  the  same  as  from  man,  "we 
shall  be  demanding  it ;  and  if  we  do  not  find  what 
we  demand,  we  shall  become  irritated,  shall  ascribe  to 
ill-will  what  is  due  to  impossibility. 

Thus  it  is  not  a  cruelty  to  woman  to  recognize  that  she 
is  what  she  is,  —  a  spiritually  weaker  being ;  it  is  a 
cruelty  to  recognize  her  as  equal. 

What  I  call  weakness  or  lesser  spiritual  power  is  the 


488  ON  THE  EELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

lesser  submission  of  the  flesh  to  the  spirit,  especially  — 
womau's  chief  characteristic  —  a  lesser  faith  in  the  com- 
mands of  reason. 

The  greatest  number  of  sufferings  which  result  from 
the  intercourse  of  men  and  women  result  from  the  abso- 
lute misunderstanding  of  one  sex  by  the  other. 

Very  few  men  understand  what  children  mean  to  a 
woman,  what  place  they  occupy  in  her  life ;  and  still 
fewer  women  understand  what  the  duty  of  honour,  the 
social  duty,  the  religious  duty,  mean  to  a  man. 

A  man  may  understand,  though  he  has  never  been 
pregnant  or  borne  a  child,  that  it  is  hard  and  painful  to 
be  pregnant  and  to  bear  a  cliild,  and  that  it  is  an  impor- 
tant matter ;  but  there  are  extremely  few  women  who  will 
understand  that  spiritually  to  carry  and  bring  forth  a  new 
conception  of  life  is  a  hard  and  an  important  matter.  They 
will  understand  it  for  a  minute,  but  immediately  forget 
it.  And  the  moment  their  cares,  even  if  it  be  of  their 
household,  of  their  attire,  appear  on  the  scene,  they  can 
no  longer  remember  the  reality  of  men's  convictions,  and 
all  that  appears  to  them  as  an  unreal  invention  in  com- 
parison with  cakes  and  pieces  of  chintz. 

I  have  been  struck  by  the  thought  that  one  of  the  chief 
causes  of  an  inimical  feeling  between  husbands  and  wives 
is  their  rivalry  in  the  matter  of  conducting  their  family. 

The  wife  must  not  recognize  her  husband  as  sensible 
and  practical,  because,  if  she  did  so,  she  would  have  to  do 
his  will,  and  vice  versa. 

If  I  were  now  writing  the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  I  would 
bring  this  out. 

The  insipidity  of  our  life  is  due  to  the  power  of  the 
women ;  but  the  power  of  the  women  is  due  to  the  in- 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  489 

continence  of  the  men ;  thus  the  cause  of  the  monstrosity 
of  life  is  due  to  the  incontinence  of  the  men. 

An  attractive  woman  says  to  herself :  "  He  is  clever, 
he  is  learned,  he  is  famous,  he  is  rich,  he  is  great,  he  is 
moral,  holy ;  but  he  surrenders  himself  to  me,  a  foolish, 
ignorant,  poor,  insignificant,  immoral  woman ;  conse- 
quently reason  and  learning  and  everything  are  nonsense," 
This  undoes  them  and  makes  them  bad. 

After  all,  it  is  always  those  against  whom  violence  is 
used  that  rule,  that  is,  those  who  fulfil  the  law  of  non-re- 
sistance. Thus  women  try  to  obtain  their  rights,  but  they 
rule  us  for  the  very  reason  that  they  have  been  subjected 
by  force.  The  institutions  are  in  the  hands  of  men,  but 
pubhc  opinion  is  in  the  hands  of  women.  And  public 
opinion  is  a  million  times  more  powerful  than  all  the 
laws  and  the  army.  As  a  proof  that  public  opinion 
is  in  the  hands  of  women,  may  serve  this,  that  not  only 
the  arrangement  of  the  house,  the  food,  is  determined  by 
the  women,  but  that  the  women  spend  the  wealth,  con- 
sequently guide  the  labours  of  men ;  the  success  of  the 
productions  of  art  and  of  books,  and  even  the  appoint- 
ment of  rulers,  is  determined  by  public  opinion,  but  public 
opinion  is  determined  by  the  women. 

Somebody  has  well  said  that  it  is  the  men  who  need  to 
seek  their  emancipation  from  the  women,  and  not  vice  versa. 

It  is  proper  for  women  to  sustain  life  by  childbirth, 
the  education  of  their  children,  the  furnishing  of  new 
forces  in  place  of  those  used  up ;  it  is  proper  for  men  to 
direct  these  forces,  that  is,  Hfe  itself.  Either  can  do 
both;  but  this  is  proper. 

What  can  there  be  more  stupid  and  more  harmful  for 
the   women  than   the   modern  talk   about    the    equality 


490  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

of  the  sexes,  or  eveu  about  the  superiority  of  the  women 
over  the  men.  For  a  man  with  a  Christian  world  con- 
ception there  can  naturally  he  no  question  about  giving 
any  rights  exclusively  to  meu,  or  about  not  respecting 
and  loving  a  woman  like  any  other  person ;  but  to  as- 
sert that  woman  has  the  same  spiritual  forces  as  man, 
especially  that  woman  can  just  as  much  be  guided  by 
reason  and  can  believe  in  the  same  way  as  man,  is  to 
demand  of  woman  what  she  cannot  give  (I  do  not  speak 
of  exceptions),  and  to  provoke  in  her  irritation,  which  is 
based  on  the  supposition  that  she  does  not  want  to  do 
what  she  cannot  do,  without  having  for  it  a  categorical 
imperative  in  reason. 

If  the  question  is  about  being  removed  by  man  from 
those  cares  and  labours  which  result  from  education,  or 
rather  from  tending  on  little  children,  —  from  putting 
them  to  bed,  washing  their  linen  and,  in  general,  all 
hnen,  from  preparing  food  for  them  and,  in  general,  for 
all,  from  making  clothes  for  them,  and  so  forth,  —  this 
is  in  the  highest  degree  not  only  un-Christian  and  not 
good,  but  also  unjust. 

Woman,  as  it  is,  bears  the  greater  labour  of  carrying 
and  nursing  the  children,  and  so,  it  would  seem,  it  is 
natural  that  all  the  other  cares  ought  to  be  taken  over 
by  man  as  much  as  it  is  possible  without  interfering  with 
his  work,  which  is  also  necessary  for  the  family.  And  so 
it  would  be  by  all  means,  if  the  barbarous  habit  of  throw- 
ing the  whole  burden  of  work  on  the  weaker,  and,  there- 
fore, on  the  oppressed,  had  not  taken  such  firm  root  in 
our  society.  This  has  so  permeated  our  habits  that, 
in  spite  of  the  equality  of  woman  as  recogidzed  by  men, 
the  most  liberal  man,  as  well  as  the  most  chivalrous, 
will  warmly  defend  a  woman's  right  to  be  a  professor,  a 
preacher,  or  will  at  the  risk  of  his  life  rush  to  lift  up 
a  handkerchief  which  a  woman  has  dropped,  and  so  forth, 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  491 

but  will  never  fall  upon  the  idea  of  washing  the  diapers 
which  their  common  child  has  soiled,  or  of  making  a  pair 
of  trousers  for  his  son,  when  his  wife  is  pregnant,  or  is 
nursing,  or  simply  tired,  or  simply  wants  to  read  or  think 
awhile  to  make  up  for  the  time  lost  in  carrying  and 
nursing. 

Public  opinion  is  so  distorted  in  this  respect  that  such 
acts  would  be  found  ridicules,  and  it  would  take  great 
courage  to  do  them. 

Here  is  the  real  emancipation  of  woman  : 
Not  to  consider  any  work  woman's  work  such  as  it 
would  be  a  disgrace  to  touch,  and  to  aid  them  with  all 
our  strength,  for  the  very  reason  that  they  are  physically 
weaker,  and  to  take  away  from  them  all  the  work  which 
we  can  take  upon  ourselves. 

The  same  in  the  education  of  the  girls,  having  in  view 
the  fact  that  they  will  probably  have  to  bring  forth  chil- 
dren, and  so  will  have  less  leisure ;  in  view  of  this  fact 
the  schools  ought  to  be  arranged,  not  worse,  but  even 
better  than  those  for  men,  so  that  they  may  in  advance 
gain  strength  and  knowledge.     They  are  capable  of  that. 

It  is  quite  true  that  in  relation  to  women  and  their 
labour  there  exist  many  very  harmful  prejudices  which 
have  taken  strong  root  since  antiquity,  and  it  is  still  more 
true  that  it  is  necessary  to  struggle  against  them.  But 
I  do  not  think  that  a  society  which  will  establish  reading- 
rooms  and  apartments  for  women  will  be  a  means  for  the 
struggle.  I  am  not  provoked  by  the  fact  that  women 
receive  smaller  wages  than  men,  —  wages  are  established 
according  to  the  worth  of  the  labour,  —  but  by  this,  that 
the  woman  who  bears,  nurses,  brings  up  little  children  is 
also  burdened  with  the  work  of  the  kitchen,  that  she  has 
to  broil  at  the  stove,  wash  the  dishes  and  the  linen,  make 
the  clothes,  and   wash   the  tables,  floors,  and  windows. 


492  ON  tup:  relation  between  the  sexes 

Why  is  this  dreadfully  hard  labour  thrown  on  woman's 
shoulders  ?  A  peasant,  factory  hand,  official,  and  any 
other  man  may  have  nothing  to  do,  but  he  will  be  lying 
and  smoking,  leaving  it  to  a  woman  (and  the  woman  sub- 
mits to  it),  who  is  frequently  pregnant,  or  sick,  or  with 
children,  to  broil  at  the  stove  or  to  bear  the  terrible 
labour  of  washiug  the  linen,  or  of  tending  her  sick  babe 
at  night.  And  all  this  is  due  to  the  superstition  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  woman's  work. 

It  is  a  terrible  evil,  and  from  this  come  numerous 
diseases  of  women,  premature  aging,  death,  dulling  of  the 
women  themselves  and  of  their  children. 

For  the  agreement  of  the  conjugal  pair  it  is  necessary 
that  in  their  views  on  the  world  and  on  life,  if  they  do 
not  coincide,  the  one  who  thinks  less  should  submit  to  the 
one  who  thinks  more. 

Women  have  always  recognized  men's  power  over 
them.  It  could  not  have  been  otherwise  in  the  non- 
Christian  world.  Man  is  strong,  and  so  man  exerted 
power.  Thus  it  has  been  in  the  whole  world  (excluding 
the  doubtful  amazons  and  the  law  of  maternity),  and  thus 
it  is  even  now  among  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  thou- 
sandths of  the  human  race.  But  in  order  that  the  freedom 
of  the  slaves  and  of  woman  may  not  be  a  misfortune, 
it  is  necessary  that  the  emancipated  should  be  Christians, 
that  is,  should  use  their  lives  in  serving  God  and  men, 
and  not  themselves.  What,  then,  is  to  be  done  ?  This 
one  thing  is  to  be  done :  it  is  necessary  to  draw  men  to 
Christianity,  to  convert  them  to  Christianity.  But  this 
can  be  done  only  by  doing  in  life  Christ's  law. 

I  have,  among  other  things,  thought  a  great  deal  about 
women,  about  marriage,  and  I  should  like  to  tell  about  it, 
of  course,  not  about  the  modern  little  idols,  the  univer- 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  493 

sity  courses,  but  about  woman's  great  eternal  destination. 
Many  perverse  things  in  this  respect  are  preached  precisely 
in  the  circles  of  intelligent  women,  and  namely  this :  for 
example,  they  preach  that  woman  ought  not  to  be  exclu- 
sive,—  that  she  must  not  love  her  children  more  than  any 
one  else.  They  preach  many  misty,  obscure  things  about 
evolution,  about  her  equahty  with  man  ;  but  this  proposi- 
tion, that  woman  must  not  love  her  children  more  than 
strangers,  is  preached  everywhere,  at  all  times,  is  con- 
sidered an  axiom,  and  as  a  practical  rule  includes  in 
itself  the  essence  of  the  doctrine ;  but  this  very  proposi- 
tion is  quite  false. 

It  is  the  destiny  of  every  man,  both  man  and  woman, 
to  serve  men.  With  this  general  proposition,  I  believe 
agree  all  men  who  are  not  immoral.  The  difference 
between  men  and  women  in  the  fulfilment  of  this  destiny 
is  great,  according  to  the  means  with  which  they  serve 
men.  A  man  serves  men  with  physical,  and  mental,  and 
moral  labour.  The  means  of  his  ministration  are  very 
varied.  The  whole  activity  of  humanity,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  childbirth  and  nuising,  forms  the  arena  of  his 
ministration  to  men.  But  woman,  in  addition  to  her 
ability  to  serve  men  with  all  the  same  sides  of  her  being 
as  man,  is  by  her  constitution  destined  and  inevitably 
drawn  to  that  ministration  which  alone  is  excluded  from 
the  sphere  of  man's  ministration.  The  ministration  to 
humanity  is  naturally  divided  into  two  parts:  one  —  the 
increase  of  the  good  in  existing  humanity,  the  other  — 
the  continuation  of  humanity  itself.  Men  are  preemi- 
nently destined  for  the  first,  for  they  are  deprived  of 
the  possibility  of  serving  the  second.  Women  are  pre- 
eminently destined  for  the  second,  because  they  are 
exclusively  adapted  for  it.  It  is  impossible,  wrong,  and 
sinful  (that  is,  a  mistake)  to  forget  and  to  wipe  out  the 
second,  as  people  try  to  do.     From  this  distinction  result 


494  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

the  duties  of  either,  duties  which  are  not  invented  by 
men,  but  lie  in  the  nature  of  things.  From  this  same 
difference  results  the  valuation  of  man's  and  woman's 
virtue  and  vice,  —  a  valuation  which  has  existed  through 
all  the  ages  and  which  can  never  cease  to  exist,  so  long 
as  men  have  reason. 

It  has  always  been  so,  and  it  will  always  be  so,  that  a 
man  who  has  passed  his  life  in  his  manifold  male  labour, 
and  a  woman  w^ho  has  passed  her  life  in  bearing,  nursing, 
and  bringing  up  her  children,  will  feel  that  they  are  doing 
what  is  right,  and  they  will  evoke  men's  respect  and 
love,  because  both  have  fulfilled  their  indubitable  destiny. 
Man's  destiny  is  more  varied  and  broader,  woman's 
destiny  is  more  uniform  and  narrower,  but  deeper,  and 
so  it  has  always  been  and  it  always  will  be  so  that  a  man, 
who  has  hundreds  of  duties  and  has  been  false  to  one  or 
ten  of  them,  will  not  be  a  bad  or  harmful  man,  so  long 
as  he  has  performed  nine-tenths  of  his  destiny.  But  a 
woman,  who  has  three  duties,  will,  by  becoming  untrue 
to  one  of  them,  perform  only  two-thirds  of  them,  and, 
having  become  untrue  to  two,  becomes  negative,  harmful. 
Public  opinion  has  always  been  such  and  always  will  be 
such,  because  such  is  the  essence  of  the  matter.  A  man, 
to  do  God's  will,  must  serve  Him  in  the  sphere  of  physical 
labour,  and  of  thought,  and  of  morality ;  with  all  these 
works  is  he  able  to  accomplish  his  destiny ;  for  woman 
the  means  for  serving  God  are  preeminently  and  almost 
exclusively  (because  no  one  but  her  can  do  it)  the  children. 

Man  is  called  to  serve  God  only  through  his  works ; 
woman  is  called  to  serve  only  through  her  children. 

And  so  the  love  of  her  children,  which  is  inherent  in 
woman,  the  exclusive  love,  with  which  it  is  quite  vain  to 
struggle  by  means  of  reason,  will  always  be,  and  always 
must  be,  peculiar  to  the  woman  as  mother.  This  love 
for  the  child  in  babyhood  is  not  at  all  egoism,  as  we  are 
falsely  taught  to  believe,  but  the  love  of  the  labourer  for 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  495 

the  work  which  he  is  doiag,  when  it  is  in  his  hands. 
Take  this  love  for  the  object  of  his  work  away  from  him, 
and  the  work  is  impossible. 

So  long  as  I  am  making  a  boot  I  love  it  more  than 
anything,  just  as  a  mother  loves  her  child ;  if  they  spoil 
it  for  me,  I  shall  be  in  despair ;  but  I  love  it  so  long  as  I 
am  working  at  it.  \Mien  I  am  done  with  it,  there  is  left 
an  attachment,  a  feeble  and  illegitimate  predilection  ;  even 
so  it  is  with  the  mother. 

Man  is  called  to  serve  men  by  means  of  varied  labours, 
and  he  loves  these  labours  so  long  as  he  is  at  work  over 
them ;  woman  is  called  to  serve  men  through  her  children 
while  she  is  making  them,  that  is,  rearing  and  bringing 
them  up. 

In  this  do  I  see  a  complete  equality  of  man  and  woman, 
—  in  their  common  destiny  to  serve  God  and  men,  in  spite 
of  the  difference  of  the  form  of  this  service.  This  equality 
is  manifested  in  this  also,  that  one  is  as  important  as  the 
other,  that  one  is  as  unthinkable  as  the  other,  that  one 
conditions  the  other,  and  that  in  order  to  attain  their 
destiny,  the  knowledge  of  the  truth  is  indispensable  to 
both,  and  that  without  this  knowledge  the  activity  both 
of  the  man  and  the  woman  becomes,  not  useful,  but 
harmful,  to  humanity. 

]\Ian  is  called  to  fulfil  his  varied  work,  but  his  work  is 
only  then  useful,  and  his  work  (to  plough  the  field  or 
make  cannon),  and  his  mental  activit"*^  rto  make  men's 
life  easier  or  to  count  out  money),  and  his  religious 
activity  (to  bring  men  closer  together  or  sing  a  mass)  are 
only  then  fruitful,  when  they  are  done  in  the  name  of 
the  highest  truth  accessible  to  man. 

The  same  is  true  of  woman's  destiny  :  her  bringing 
forth,  nursing,  and  rearing  of  children  will  be  useful  to 
humanity  when  she  will  bring  up  children,  not  simply 
for  her  pleasure,  but  as  future  servants  of  humanity, 
when   the    education  of   these  children  will    be  accom- 


496  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

plished  in  the  name  of  the  highest  truth  accessible  to 
her,  that  is,  when  she  will  educate  her  children  in  such 
a  way  that  they  may  be  able  to  take  as  little  as  possible 
from  men  and  give  them  as  much  as  possible.  The  ideal 
woman  will,  in  my  opinion,  be  she  who,  having  acquired 
the  highest  world  conception,  —  the  faith  which  will  be 
accessible  to  her,  —  will  abandon  herself  to  her  feminine 
calling,  which  is  invincibly  inherent  in  her,  of  bringing 
forth,  nursing,  and  educating  the  largest  number  of 
children  capable  of  working  for  men  according  to  the 
world  conception  which  she  has  made  her  own.  But 
this  world  conception  is  not  drawn  from  university 
courses,  but  is  acquired  only  by  not  closing  eyes  and 
ears,  and  by  meekness  of  heart. 

Well,  and  those  who  have  no  children,  who  have  not 
married,  widows  ?  They  will  do  well,  if  they  will  take 
part  in  man's  varied  work. 

And  every  woman  who  is  through  bearing  children 
will,  if  she  has  strength,  be  able  to  busy  herself  with  this 
aid  to  man  in  his  work,  and  this  aid  is  very  precious.  .  .  . 

A  good  domestic  hfe  is  possible  only  with  the  con- 
scious conviction,  educated  in  woman,  of  the  necessity  of 
permanent  submission  to  man.  I  have  said  that  this  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  this  has  been  so  as  far  back 
as  we  know  the  lifo  of  man,  and  by  this,  that  domestic 
life  with  children  is  a  voyage  in  a  frail  boat,  which  is 
possible  only  if  all  submit  to  one  man.  Such  they  have 
always  recognized  man  to  be,  because,  since  he  does 
not  bear  children  or  nurse  them,  he  is  able  to  be  a 
better  guide  to  his  wife  than  the  wife  can  be  to  her 
husband. 

But  are  women  really  always  inferior  to  men?  Not 
at  all.  The  moment  both  are  chaste,  they  are  equal. 
But  what  is  meant  by  this,  that  women  now  demand,  not 
only  equality,  but  also  supremacy  ?     Only  this,  that  the 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  497 

family  is  evolving,  and  so  the  older  form  is  falling  to  pieces. 
The  relations  of  the  sexes  are  looking  for  new  forms,  and 
the  old  form  is  decomposing. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  what  the  new  form  will  be, 
though  many  things  may  be  noticed.  Maybe  a  greater 
number  of  men  observing  chastity  ;  there  may  be  tempo- 
rary marriages,  coming  to  an  end  after  the  birth  of  children, 
so  that  the  conjugal  pair  separates  after  the  birth  of 
children  and  remains  chaste ;  maybe  the  children  will 
be  brought  up  by  society.  It  is  impossible  to  foresee  the 
new  forms.  But  what  is  unquestionable  is  this,  that 
the  old  form  is  decomposing,  and  that  the  existence  of  the 
old  form  is  possible  only  with  the  submission  of  wife  to 
husband,  as  it  has  always  and  everywhere  been,  and  as 
happens  there  where  the  family  is  still  preserved. 

Yesterday  I  read  Without  Dogma.  There  is  a  very 
delicate  description  of  love  of  woman,  —  tenderly,  much 
more  dehcately  done  than  with  the  French,  where  it  is  sen- 
sual, or  with  the  English,  where  it  is  Pharisaical,  or  with 
the  Germans,  where  it  is  inflated ;  and  I  thought  I  might 
write  a  novel  of  chaste  love,  ...  for  which  the  transition 
to  sensuality  is  impossible,  which  forms  the  best  defence 
against  sensuality.  Yes,  is  this  not  the  only  salvation 
from  sensuality  ?  Yes,  yes,  it  is.  It  is  for  this  that  man 
was  created  as  man  and  woman.  Only  with  woman  can 
one  lose  his  chastity,  and  only  with  her  can  one  keep  it. 
It  is  good  to  make  a  note  of  it.  .  .  . 

Man,  like  any  animal,  submits  to  the  law  of  the  struggle 
and  to  the  sexual  instinct  for  the  strengthening  of  the 
species ;  as  a  rational,  loving,  divine  being,  he  submits 
to  the  reverse  law,  not  that  of  the  struggle  with  his  rivals 
and  enemies,  but  that  of  meekness,  endurance  of  insults, 
and  of  love  for  them,  and  not  that  of  the  sexual  instinct, 
but  that  of  chastity. 


498  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

One  of  the  most  important  works  of  humanity  consists 
in  the  education  of  a  chaste  woman. 

Woman,  so  a  legend  tells,  is  the  instrument  of  the 
devil.  She  is  in  general  stupid,  but  the  devil  gives  her 
his  intellect  for  her  support,  when  she  is  working  for  him. 
You  behold,  she  has  done  wonders  of  the  mind,  of  far- 
sightedness, or  constancy,  in  order  to  do  abominable 
things ;  but  the  moment  it  is  not  a  question  of  an  abomi- 
nation, she  is  unable  to  understand  the  simplest  thing, 
does  not  reflect  beyond  the  present  moment,  and  has  no 
endurance,  no  patience  (except  in  childbirth  and  the 
bringing  up  of  children). 

All  this  has  reference  to  the  non-Christian,  the  unchaste 
woman,  .  .  .  Oh,  how  I  should  hke  to  show  to  woman  the 
whole  meaning  of  the  chaste  woman.  The  chaste  woman 
(the  legend  about  Mary  is  not  given  without  good  reason) 
will  save  the  world. 

Woman's  destiny  is  above  all  else  and  preeminently 
man's  destiny,  of  which  I  have  spoken  before.  Marriage 
and  children  in  comparison  with  cehbacy  is  the  same  as 
the  conditions  of  village  life  as  compared  with  the  luxu- 
rious life  of  the  city  :  the  conditions  of  life,  celibacy  or 
the  family,  cannot  in  themselves  influence  man.  There 
may  be  a  holy  and  a  sinful  celibacy,  and  there  may  be  a 
sinful  and  a  holy  family. 

Every  girl,  and  you  in  particular,  the  same  as  a  man 
in  whom  an  inner  spiritual  life  is  beginning,  I  advise  as 
much  as  possible  to  keep  away  from  everything  which  in 
our  society  supports  in  the  girl  the  idea  of  the  necessity, 
the  desirability,  of  marriage,  and  predisposes  to  it, — 
novels,  music,  idle  prattle,  dances,  games,  cards,  even 
attire.  Truly,  it  is  more  pleasant  to  wash  one's  own 
shirt  (and  for  the  soul  it  is  so  much  more  useful)  than  to 
play  secretary  all  evening,  even  with  the  most  clever  of 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  499 

men.  Above  all  else,  that  conception,  so  universal  in  the 
world,  that  it  is  shameful  not  to  marry  and  to  remain 
an  old  maid,  is  just  as  contrary  to  truth  as  all  worldly 
opinions  in  regard  to  questions  of  life.  Celibate  life, 
filled  with  good  works,  celibate,  because  the  works  which 
fill  this  life  are  all  above  marriage  (and  such  works  are  all 
works  of  love  for  your  neighbour,  of  giving  a  cup  of 
water  to  drink),  are  an  infinite  number  of  times  higher 
than  all  domestic  life.  (Matt.  xix.  11.)  All  men  can- 
not receive  this  saying,  save  they  to  whom  it  is  given. 
Thus  all  men  of  all  nations  and  of  all  ages  have  always 
looked  with  the  greatest  repect  and  emotion  upon  the 
men  and  women  who  remained  celibate,  not  from  com- 
pulsion, but  for  the  sake  of  God.  But  in  our  society  they 
are  the  most  ridiculous  of  people.  Indeed,  they  are  just 
like  those  who  are  poor  for  the  sake  of  God,  and  those 
who  did  not  know  how  to  make  money. 

But  to  every  girl,  and  to  you,  I  give  the  advice  to  set 
before  you  as  an  ideal  the  service  of  God,  that  is,  the 
keeping  and  increasing  in  yourself  of  the  divine  spark, 
and  so  —  celibacy,  if  marriage  hinders  this  ministration  ; 
but  if  it  should  happen  that,  submitting  to  your  selfish 
feeling  for  one  man,  you  should  get  married,  do  not  rejoice 
and  become  proud,  as  generally  happens,  of  your  position 
as  wife  and  mother,  but,  without  losing  sight  of  the  chief 
aim  of  life,  the  service  of  God,  see  to  it  with  all  your 
strength  that  your  exclusive  and  egoistical  attachment  for 
the  family  does  not  interfere  with  your  serving  God. 

I  have  always  thought  that  one  of  the  surest  signs  of 
the  seriousness  of  relations  to  moral  questions  is  strictness 
to  oneself  in  the  sexual  question.  .  .  . 

The  offence  into  which  N has  fallen  is  very  intel- 
ligible and  peculiar  to  precisely  such  honest  and  truthful 
natures  as  I  imagine  him  to  be.  The  relations  were  estab- 
lished, and  he  wanted  not  to  conceal  anything,  but  openly 


500  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

and  frankly  to  confess  them,  by  giving  them  a  character 
of  spirituality. 

1  fully  understand  his  idea  :  to  utilize  that  spiritual 
elation  which  enamourment  gives,  in  order  to  use  this 
elation  for  God's  work.  That  is  possible,  and  I  think 
that  the  energy  of  men  who  are  in  this  state  may  be  con- 
siderably raised,  and  may  give  what  to  us  seems  to  be 
unexpectedly  great  results.  I  have  more  than  once  seen 
this,  and  I  have  known  such  cases  ;  but  what  is  terrible 
here  is  this,  that  with  the  destruction  of  enamourment 
(which  is  very  possible  and  very  probable)  not  only  this 
access  of  energy  may  fall,  but  also  every  interest  in  God's 
work,  of  which,  too,  I  have  seen  examples.  And  that 
this  happens  and  can  happen  proves  that  God's  work,  the 
service  of  Him,  cannot  and  must  not  lean  on  anything, 
and  everything  else  must  be  based  on  the  consciousness 
of  the  necessity  and  the  joy  of  this  service. 

Thus  it  is  possible  (and  this  is  often  done)  to  increase 
the  energy  of  serving  God  with  human  glory,  and  again 
there  is  the  danger  of  growing  indifferent  to  God's 
work  the  moment  the  approval  of  men  is  destroyed. 

All  this  you  know  and  have  given  utterance  to,  but 
I  wanted  to  add  just  one  thing  to  what  I  wrote  to  you  in 

my  last  letter  as  to  my  agreeing  with  N that  the 

union  of  a  man  and  a  woman  is  good  when  it  has  for  its 
aim  the  conjoined  service  of  God  and  men, — namely, 
that  the  conjugal,  the  bodily,  tie  does  not  exactly  add 
strength  in  the  service,  but  that  for  certain  people,  who 
are  swayed  by  the  restlessness  of  the  necessity  of  enam- 
ourment, it  removes  this  unrest,  which  interferes  with  tlie 
application  of  one's  whole  force  to  the  service  ;  and  so, 
although  chastity,  if  it  is  full,  is  a  most  advantageous 
condition  for  the  service,  —  for  some  people  marriage,  by 
quieting  them  and  removing  the  obstacle,  strengthens  the 
possibility  of  their  service.  But  with  it,  —  and  this  is 
the  main  thing  I  wanted  to  say,  —  it  is  necessary  that 


ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  501 

men  should  understand  and  recognize,  outside  of  mar- 
riage, and  in  marriage,  that  the  quahty  of  amorousness 
and  of  that  spiritual  elation  which  talces  place  at  this 
time  are  intended,  not  as  an  amusement,  not  as  an  enjoy- 
ment, not  for  artistic  creations  (many  think  so),  not  for 

the  increase  of  energy  in  the  service  of  God,  as  N 

thinks,  but  only  for  a  sexual,  marital  union  with  one  hus- 
band and  one  wife  for  the  production  of  children  and  the 
mutual  emancipation  from  lust.  But  every  direction  of 
this  ability  to  something  else  can  only  make  the  path 
of  man's  life  harder,  and  not  easier  and  pleasanter. 

And  so  I  fully  agree  with  you  that  this  is  a  most 
dangerous  offence  against  which  one  cauuot  be  sufticieutly 
cautious.  "  Well,"  they  say,  "  why  not  be  friendly  with 
persons  of  the  opposite  sex  as  with  those  of  the  same 
sex  ? "  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not,  and  the 
more  we  love,  the  better  it  is.  But  a  sincere  man,  who 
is  serious  in  matters  of  morality,  wiU  immediately  notice, 
as  N has,  that  such  relatious  with  women  will  be  dif- 
ferent. If  a  man  is  not  going  to  deceive  himself,  he 
will  always  observe  that  the  approximation  takes  place 
faster  than  usual ;  that  the  bicycle  rides  easily  and  fast, 
and  that  there  is  no  need  of  the  same  efforts  as  usual ;  and 
that,  therefore,  there  must  be  a  cause  for  it.  And  as  soon 
as  a  man,  who  is  serious  in  matters  of  morality,  notices 
this  and  does  not  wish  to  ride  down-hill,  knowing  that  the 
motion  will  be  increasing  all  the  time  and  will  lead  to 
marriage  or  to  an  exclusive  feeling,  he  will  come  to  a  stop. 

Marriage,  of  course,  is  good  and  indispensable  for  the 
continuation  of  the  race,  but  if  so,  it  is  necessary  that 
the  parents  should  feel  in  themselves  the  strength  to 
educate  their  children,  not  as  drones,  but  as  servants 
of  God  and  of  men.  And  for  this  it  is  necessary  to 
he  able  to  live,  not  by  the  labours  of  others,  but  by  one's 
own,  giving  more  than  receiving  from  men. 


502  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

But  we  have  a  bourgeois  rule  that  a  man  may  marry 
only  when  he  is  pressing  hard  down  on  the  backs  of 
others,  that  is,  when  he  has  means.  Exactly  the  opposite 
is  needed  :  only  he  may  marry  who  can  live  and  bring 
up  a  child,  without  having  any  means.  Only  such  par- 
ents will  be  able  to  educate  their  children  well. 

I  have  looked  through  the  book. 

It  is  impossible  to  write  about  it  and  reply  to  it,  just 
as  it  is  impossible  to  reply  to  a  man's  proof  that  it  is 
agi'eeable  and  harmless  to  cohabit  with  corpses.  A  man 
who  does  not  feel  what  the  elephants  feel,  that  cohabitation 
is,  in  general,  an  act  which  lowers  oneself  and  one's  mate, 
and  so  is  abominable,  an  act  in  which  a  man  involuntarily 
pays  his  tribute  to  his  animality,  and  which  is  redeemed 
only  by  the  fact  that  it  fulfils  that  purpose  (childbirth) 
for  which  the  necessity  of  this  disgusting,  debasing  act, 
invincible  though  it  is  at  a  certain  time,  is  inherent  in 
his  nature,  —  to  such  a  man,  in  spite  of  his  ability  to 
reason,  since  he  is  standing  on  the  level  of  an  animal, 
it  is  impossible  to  exyjlain  or  prove  this.  I  do  not  even 
speak  of  the  fallacy  of  Malthusianism,  which  places 
objective  considerations  (and  false  ones  at  that)  at  the 
base  of  the  business  of  morality,  which  is  always  sub- 
jective,—  nor  even  of  the  fact  that  between  murder, 
abortion,  and  this  method  there  is  no  material  differ- 
ence. 

Pardon  me :  it  is  a  shame  and  an  abomination  to  speak 
seriously  of  this.  It  is  necessary  to  speak  and  to  think 
rather  of  what  distortion  or  dulness  of  the  moral  feehng 
could  have  brought  men  to  this.  It  is  not  for  us  to 
quarrel  with  them,  but  to  cure  them.  Eeally,  an  igno- 
rant, drunken  Eussian  peasant,  who  believes  in  "  Friday," 
who  would  look  with  horror  upon  such  an  act,  and  who 
always  looks  upon  the  act  of  cohabitation  as  upon  a  sin, 
stands  immeasurably  above  the  people  who  write  well 


ON"  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES  503 

and  have  the  boldness  to  quote  philosophy  in  confirma- 
tion of  their  savagery. 

No  kind  of  human  crimes  against  the  moral  law  do 
people  conceal  from  one  another  with  such  caution  as 
those  which  are  called  sexual  lust ;  and  there  is  no  crime 
against  the  moral  law  which  is  so  common  to  all  men, 
embracing  them  in  the  most  varied  and  most  terrible 
forms ;  there  is  no  crime  against  the  moral  law  upon 
which  men  look  with  such  disagreement,  —  some  regard- 
ing a  certain  act  as  a  terrible  sin,  and  others  looking 
upon  the  same  act  as  upon  a  customary  cbnvenience  or 
pleasure ;  there  is  no  crime  in  respect  to  which  so  many 
Pharisaical  utterances  have  been  made ;  there  is  no  crime 
the  relation  to  which  so  correctly  indicates  man's  level ; 
and  there  is  no  crime  more  pernicious  for  separate  in- 
dividuals and  for  the  progress  of  all  humanity. 

These  thoughts  are  very  simple  and  very  clear  for  him 
who  thinks  in  order  to  know  the  truth.  These  thoughts 
appear  strange,  paradoxical,  and  even  incorrect  to  him 
who  reasons,  not  in  order  to  find  the  truth,  but  in  order 
to  consider  true  his  life  with  all  its  vices  and  aberrations. 

There  is  never  any  end  to  this  matter.  I  even  now 
think  of  the  same  (of  the  sexual  question),  and  it  still 
appears  to  me  that  there  is  much  left  to  be  explained  and 
added.  And  this  is  comprehensible  because  the  matter 
is  of  such  enormous  importance  and  novelty,  and  the 
strength,  to  speak  without  any  false  modesty,  is  so  weak 
and  so  httle  in  keeping  with  the  importance  of  the 
subject. 

For  this  reason  I  think  that  all  must  work  who  are 
sincerely  interested  in  the  matter,  —  all  must  work  out 
this  subject  according  to  their  strength.  If  each  man 
will  sincerely  say  from  his  personal  point  of  view  what 


504  ON  THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEXES 

he  thinks  aud  feels  about  this  subject,  many  obscure 
points  will  be  made  clear,  what  is  usually  and  falsely 
hidden  will  be  revealed,  what  seems  strange  from  uri- 
wontedness  to  see  it  will  cease  seeming  such,  and  many 
things  which  seem  natural  from  the  habit  of  living  badly 
will  cease  seeming  such.  Through  a  happy  chance  I  have 
been  able,  more  than  others,  to  turn  the  aitention  of  soci- 
ety to  this  subject.  Others  must  continue  the  work  from 
various  sides. 


THE   END. 


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